Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/25

 a clear little voice that startled Grover and Mr. Pearn into a standing posture. The voice, thought Grover, was almost too consciously pitched; the intonation rather deliberately non-American. The intruder had held out a hand to Mr. Pearn, who was kissing it; it was as though one saw Anatole France paying homage to one of his own heroines,—say Mme. Nanteuil. A small white face delicately freckled was puckered into a smile of mild amusement, the kind of amusement, thought Grover, that worldly women are forever deriving from situations that to everyone else are a little embarrassing. This particular example was petite and ultra-smart, and she seemed as odd in Miss Pearn's house as a yellow and brown orchid would seem in a bed of mignonette. She looked, too, as though she might once have been through something: an illness or a calamity. By some strange logic uncatalogued, God knew, by the Professor Thanet, she produced the effect a beautiful woman might have produced. On trying to account for it later, Grover decided that the effect was due to a coordination of manner and garb achieved by a perfect understanding of her limits: she was so odd in dimensions, yet so utterly in scale! The dead white skin, the amber eyes, tired eyes, the artificially scarlet lips, the little hat and a glimpse of dry, snuff-colored hair, the narrow brown cape and bizarre chain,—each contributed an exact quota to an entity that no other person could, with the same simple ingredients, have