Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/47

 her came a brutal bronze boxer with gaping sockets where once enamel made him eyes. His coarse muscles and rather bestial masculinity embarrassed her, but she stared with fascination. Strange, he was not as beautiful as Apollo, but she felt the spinal chill which she associated with beauty. She wished Augustus would remember to turn the crank. One should not stare too long at this animal, yet she could neither drag her eyes away, nor tell Augustus to turn on.

'...Still an instructor, next year, and live with your father...a professor...eight hundred a year...little home...settle down...restless...tormenting yourself with art...Amherst. By and by in God's good time...'

Did men look like that? Threatening, bulging muscles, fleshless thighs, corded neck and arms? She was almost afraid the creature would follow her out of the box. How terrible would be a man of bronze! Stronger than twenty men of flesh.

'Are you ready, Lanice?'

'Oh, quite. Turn the crank.'

'My dear, you could not have been listening. Well...'

They moved on to the Throne Room of Versailles. Gold, crimson, polished floors, seemingly hundreds of candles actually burning in crystal chandeliers. Kings and Queens!!!

'I am a patient man by nature and I can, I will wait...I...'

They had come around once again to Switzerland.