Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/768

738 sunshine upon a winter's day—it seemed only to intensify the cold. I held out to the end. I kept mental step with her until the ladies left us. Then I pleaded a headache to John, making him excuse me, and went away with a chill, weary, torturing sense of depression, which would have made actual pain a relief.

March 1st.—It is more than a week since I have turned to the latter part of this book, since I have made any entry apart from business. Not because I had so little to say, but because I had so much. My days have had a charm upon them that I could not reduce to words. I have lived in a dreamy, glamourous happiness from which I had little wish to rouse myself sufficiently to try to write it down. Now, that I fear the ebb-tide has slightly set in; now, that I have not seen her for a day or two, there are blank moments enough in which to chronicle past pleasures. The evening after that dinner party, I went up to John's, ostensibly to inquire how he and his wife were after their little dissipation; but really because I was so hungry to hear something of her that I could not keep away.

It was a cold, blustering evening, for March was literally coming in like a lion. As I came into the parlor, I noticed a vast easy-chair drawn up to the glowing grate, and a moment after there came from its depths a sweet, half-sleepy voice that said, rather slowly, "If you will shut the door very closely, Mr. Dulaney, and show sufficient perception of comfort in your selection of an arm-chair, I will be so very good as to give you half the warmth and light of my beautiful fire." Miss Glenn herself! And in such a mood as I had almost despaired that I should ever be permitted to see her. Had my outer man correctly represented my inner one at that moment, I should have looked like an ecstatic fool. As it was, I am afraid the resemblance was rather evident as I went round the room inspecting the chairs until I found one which suited me; she indicating her approval of my choice merely by an odd little movement of her eyelids. I wheeled up the seat to the grate, and sat down; and, as Miss Glenn's gifts and attentions seemed to have exhausted themselves in bestowing upon me my share of the fire, I occupied myself in looking at her.

The transformations of this woman are absolutely magical. Her body seems to be a mere covering for her soul, and to take its temporary form and hue with a chameleon-like power. To think of her as I had seen her the night before, required a force of imagination of which I was actually incapable. Perhaps her dress had something to do with her changed effect. That pale sea-green silk, with silvery, shimmering reflections, which she had worn upon the previous night, gave subtle suggestions of a mermaid; while this night she was clad in some soft, wine-colored fabric, whose folds clung to her close and warm. If a few lazy sentences, dropped at irregular intervals, a careless question now and then asked and answered, can be called a conversation, we carried on one for the next half hour. I suppose if I were to write down what we said and not how we said it, it would appear ineffably stupid; and yet it struck me then, and indeed, strikes me now, as not only the perfection of entertainment, but, under the circumstances, of good sense. To me, the feeling of having overstepped the outworks of fashion and society and reached the real woman I so coveted, the sense of being permitted to enter and rest within the doors of the inner sanctuary, filled me for that hour with blissful content. She was not performing upon the social stage for my benefit; she was not getting up a dazzling exhibition as upon the night previous; but she was paying me the infinitely higher compliment of being simply herself before me. Had this been mere flattery from an ordinary woman, its originality and delicacy would have charmed me; coming from her