The Wheel of Life | Page 5

likeness consisted solely in a certain evident
possession of virile power--a quality which women are accustomed to
describe as masculine. He was not tall, and yet he gave an impression
of bigness; away from him one invariably thought of him as of unusual
proportions, but, standing by his side, he was found to be hardly above
the ordinary height. The development of his closely knit figure, the
splendid breadth of his chest and shoulders, the slight projection of his
heavy brows and the almost brutal strength of his jaw and chin, all

combined to emphasise that appearance of ardent vitality which has
appealed so strongly to the imagination of women. Seen in repose there
was a faint suggestion of cruelty in the lines of his mouth under his
short brown moustache, but this instead of detracting from the charm
he exercised only threw into greater relief the genial brightness of his
smile.
Now Gerty, glancing up at him, remembered a little curiously, the
whispered reason for his long absence. There was always a woman in
the wind when it blew rumours of Kemper, though he was generally
considered to regard the sex with the blithe indifference of a man to
whom feminine favour has come easily. How easily Gerty had
sometimes wondered, though she had hardly ventured so much as a dim
surmise. Ten years, she would have said, was a considerable period
from which to date a passion, and she remembered now that ten years
ago Kemper had secured a divorce from his wife in some Western court.
There had been no particular scandal, no damning charges on either
side; and a club wit had remarked at the time that the only possible
ground for a separation was the fact that Mrs. Kemper had grown
jealous of her husband's after-dinner cigar. Since then other and varied
rumours had reached Gerty's ears, until finally there had blown a
veritable gale concerning a certain Madame Alta, who sang melting
soprano parts in Italian opera. Then this, too, had passed, and, with the
short memory of city livers, Gerty had forgotten alike the gossip and
the heroines of the gossip, until she noted now the lines of deeper
harassment in Kemper's face. These coming so suddenly after six
months of Europe caused her to wonder if the affair with the prima
donna had been really an entanglement of the heart.
"Well, I may not be as fast as an automobile," she presently admitted.
"But you're twice as dangerous," he retorted gaily.
For an instant the pleasant humour in his eyes held her speechless.
"Ah, well, you aren't a coward," she answered coolly enough at last.
Then her tone changed, and as she settled herself under her fur rugs she
made a cordial inviting gesture. "Come in with me and I'll take you to

Laura Wilde's," she said; "she's a genius, and you ought to know her
before the world finds her out."
With a protesting laugh Kemper held up his gloved finger.
"God forbid!" he exclaimed with a shrug which struck her as a slightly
foreign affectation. "The lady may be a female Milton, but Perry tells
me that she isn't pretty."
He touched her hand again, met her indignant defence of Laura with a
nod of smiling irony, and then, as her carriage started, he turned rapidly
down Sixty-ninth Street in the direction of the Park.
In Gerty the chance meeting had awakened a slumbering interest which
she had half forgotten, and as she drove down Fifth Avenue toward
Laura's distant home she found herself wondering idly if he would let
many days go by before he came again. The thought was still in her
mind when the carriage turned into Gramercy Park and stopped before
the old brown house hidden in creepers in which Laura lived. So
changed by this time, however, was Gerty's mood that, after leaving her
carriage, she stood hesitating from indecision upon the sidewalk. The
few bared trees in the snow, the solemn, almost ghostly, quiet of the
quaint old houses and the deserted streets, in which a flock of sparrows
quarrelled under the faint sunshine, produced in her an odd and almost
mysterious sense of unreality--as if the place, herself, the waiting
carriage, and Laura buried away in the dull brown house, were all
creations of some gossamer and dream-like quality of mind. She felt
suddenly that the sorrows which had oppressed her in the morning
belonged no more to any existence in which she herself had a part.
Then, looking up, she saw her husband crossing the street between the
two men with whom he had lunched, and even the impressive solidity
of Perry Bridewell appeared to her strangely altered and out of place.
He came up, a little breathless from his rapid walk, and it