Broken Necks/Rendezvous

She is very charming. She will wear violets and there will be lavender shadows on her cheeks. Dressed for the evening, she will seem as lifeless and secretive as a totem pole.

At half past six, she explained on the telephone. It is interesting how the telephone improves her voice. But then when she spoke to me she was in the midst of her effulgent toilet. How can a lover hope to rival the gentle Saturnalia through which a pretty woman passes before she arrives at the rendezvous?

I interrupted her in a happy infidelity when I telephoned. She was dressing, she said. And she spoke to me with an ecstasy borrowed from her mirror.

It is this faculty of regarding herself as an object of art which makes a pretty woman an involved and enigmatic companion. Her perfume bottle, her underwear, her hair comb, her silken stockings, her rouge box, powder puff and pointed shoes—these contribute toward a ritual as creative and abstract as obsesses the artist employed before a canvas.

When finally she covers herself with the dress, blotting out the intimate decorations which she has lavished on her body, she is like a votary who, depositing his gifts upon a hidden altar, leaves the scene warm with the sense that he has served the gods. It is this consciousness that in adorning herself she has offered and received a sacrifice, that she has knelt in perfect devotion before her own destiny, which renders her mysterious in the eyes of men.

The theory applies chiefly to virgins, however. To the others, the inferior destinations of their bodies serve to corrupt the serene passion which sex achieves when, still unconscious of itself, it undulates in a social and ornamental parade.

So, recalling how warm and painted with secret emotions her voice sounded as she was dressing, I arrive at the consoling illusion that she is a virgin. Yes, she was impatient as a mistress trembling to return to her lover’s arms, while I spoke. Her laughter was flushed and a bit unfocused. I had intruded upon a ritual. And I offered a realistic and disillusioning breath upon her mirror world.

If tonight I can summon a sufficient number of phrases to my aid, she will admit sorrowfully that she loves me. With the admission she will become like the memory of a beautiful song. I shall, when we are alone in my rooms and our bodies conspire toward an elusive finality, I shall remember then how I waited these moments. Even as she will recall when the room grows light with dawn not the alarming hour of her seduction, but the inexplicable rapture she feels at this moment as she stands finally clothed before her glass. It is not I of whom she thinks, but of herself. How lovely she is. How final and graceful seems the identity she bears.

Yes, to this memory her thought will return when she opens her eyes for the first time at my side. And she will understand, perhaps for the first and last time, that perfection is a tardy synonym for that which is unfulfilled. It is not the moral or sentimental reaction which will make her sad. She will weep, if she is clever enough, and her tears will be a reprimand to life that encroached its utility upon the decorations she once worshipped unreasonably.

She is here. I will speak to her with sadness. She will be thrilled to remember tomorrow that I anticipated her mourning for her chastity.

"You are irresistible tonight. Yes, I have been waiting almost an hour. And I am sad because it is another hour I have lived without you. Shall we eat? The dining room is crowded and perhaps you would prefer Of course not. It will be charming to look at you against the futile background of others. And after we are through eating we will go for a walk. I desire to verify an impression I have that the night is smaller than you."