Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/117

 gaze was the Hotel Shelton, climbing in fragile grace towards the sky.

Frederika had built up the dying fire. Resting one foot on the fender, her legs crossed, Campaspe cupped her chin in her palm, while she considered the curious veils which hang between two personalities. She sensed a definite impression that something distasteful had occurred. A fantastic young man had approached her too closely, not quite closely enough. Riotous and chaotic, her emotions mingled with her thoughts. She was uncomfortably aware of an unpleasant transmutation. She had never before, she was beginning to believe, felt just like this. Sapiently conscious, always, of men's capacity for making fools of themselves, it had never previously been her ambition to curb this propensity. It was more satisfying, generally speaking, to examine the victim while he squirmed on the pin of her observation. Gunnar, indubitably, had aroused in her a new kind of interest. She defined this, not too literally, as an adumbration of the warm glow of motherhood. The boy was, it was apparent, too sensitive to brave the rigours of existence. The pathos of ideals! The unlocked gates of the soul! How much safer, how much more secure one felt if one understood and controlled the cells of this unlocated territory. Life based on disenchantment was comparatively sane; life based on ideals, actually dangerous. She reflected: Could