Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/132

122 world; and he had often seen actress women thus bared to the eyes of men; but even in the theatre he had disliked it: he was so simple-hearted, so pure-minded,—this man of the fields,—and now, nearer, within the close and unrestrained reach of his eyes, he disliked it more. Yet it was not this, powerfully as this affected him, which slew on the instant the purpose with which he had sought Fanny Lane. For this he could have had patience and comprehension, seeing that all the influences and circumstances of her life made it inevitable. The thing which slew the purpose, almost the desire, within his heart, was the thing which Fanny Lane had divined beforehand would slay it, and had purposely plotted should slay it; it was the whole atmosphere of luxury, artificial elegance in her dress. She had chosen the showiest and costliest of her gowns: a heavy wine-colored silk, with a sweeping train trimmed profusely with white lace, white chrysanthemums, so daintily and truly made that it was hard to believe them artificial, looped the folds of the silk, and were scattered in the lace white chrysanthemums, made of pearls with yellow topazes for their centres, shone in her hair, on her neck and on her arms. She was superbly beautiful in this toilet, and she knew it; but she knew or believed that it was a kind of beauty which would bring healing and not harm to the heart of John Bassett. It did. It did its work so quickly that to her dying day, Fanny Lane never felt sure—and