The Woman in the Alcove | Page 4

mistaking. But one feeling common to the human heart
lends such warmth, such expressiveness to the features. How handsome
it made him look, how distinguished, how everything I was not
except--
But what does this mean? He has passed Miss Sperry--passed her with
a smile and a friendly word--and is speaking to me, singling me out,
offering me his arm! He is smiling, too, not as he smiled on Miss
Sperry, but more warmly, with more that is personal in it. I took his
arm in a daze. The lights were dimmer than I thought; nothing was
really bright except his smile. It seemed to change the world for me. I
forgot that I was plain, forgot that I was small, with nothing to
recommend me to the eye or heart, and let myself be drawn away,
asking nothing, anticipating nothing, till I found myself alone with him
in the fragrant recesses of the conservatory, with only the throb of
music in our ears to link us to the scene we had left.
Why had he brought me here, into this fairyland of opalescent lights
and intoxicating perfumes? What could he have to say--to show? Ah in
another moment I knew. He had seized my hands, and love, ardent love,
came pouring from his lips.
Could it be real? Was I the object of all this feeling, I? If so, then life
had changed for me indeed.
Silent from rush of emotion, I searched his face to see if this Paradise,
whose gates I was thus passionately bidden to enter, was indeed a
verity or only a dream born of the excitement of the dance and the
charm of a scene exceptional in its splendor and picturesqueness even
for so luxurious a city as New York.
But it was no mere dream. Truth and earnestness were in his manner,
and his words were neither feverish nor forced.

"I love you I! I need you!" So I heard, and so he soon made me believe.
"You have charmed me from the first. Your tantalizing, trusting, loyal
self, like no other, sweeter than any other, has drawn the heart from my
breast. I have seen many women, admired many women, but you only
have I loved. Will you be my wife?"
I was dazzled; moved beyond anything I could have conceived. I forgot
all that I had hitherto said to myself--all that I had endeavored to
impress upon my heart when I beheld him approaching, intent, as I
believed, in his search for another woman; and, confiding in his
honesty, trusting entirely to his faith, I allowed the plans and purposes
of years to vanish in the glamour of this new joy, and spoke the word
which linked us together in a bond which half an hour before I had
never dreamed would unite me to any man.
His impassioned "Mine! mine!" filled my cup to overflowing.
Something of the ecstasy of living entered my soul; which, in spite of
all I have suffered since, recreated the world for me and made all that
went before but the prelude to the new life, the new joy.
Oh, I was happy, happy, perhaps too happy! As the conservatory filled
and we passed back into the adjoining room, the glimpse I caught of
myself in one of the mirrors startled me into thinking so. For had it not
been for the odd color of my dress and the unique way in which I wore
my hair that night, I should not have recognized the beaming girl who
faced me so naively from the depths of the responsive glass.
Can one be too happy? I do not know. I know that one can be too
perplexed, too burdened and too sad.
Thus far I have spoken only of myself in connection with the evening's
elaborate function. But though entitled by my old Dutch blood to a
certain social consideration which I am happy to say never failed me, I,
even in this hour of supreme satisfaction, attracted very little attention
and awoke small comment. There was another woman present better
calculated to do this. A fair woman, large and of a bountiful presence,
accustomed to conquest, and gifted with the power of carrying off her
victories with a certain lazy grace irresistibly fascinating to the ordinary
man; a gorgeously appareled woman, with a diamond on her breast too
vivid for most women, almost too vivid for her. I noticed this diamond
early in the evening, and then I noticed her. She was not as fine as the
diamond, but she was very fine, and, had I been in a less ecstatic frame

of mind, I might have envied the homage she received from all the men,
not excepting him upon whose arm I leaned. Later, there was