Page:The Single Hound; poems of a lifetime.djvu/21

 Rh in the spacious upper hall a Summer afternoon, finger on lip, and hear her say, as the feminine callers took their departure—"Listen! Hear them kiss, the traitors!" To most women she was a provoking puzzle. To her, in turn, most women were a form of triviality to be escaped when feasible.

But stupidity had no sex with her and I equally well remember her spying down upon a stranger sent to call upon her by a mutual friend, and dismissing him unreceived after one glance from her window, remarking — "His face is as handsome and as meaningless as the full moon." At another time she called me to peep at a new Professor recently come to the college, saying—"Look dear, he is pretty as a cloth Pink!" her mouth curling in derision as she uttered it and one hand motioning as if to throw the flower away. She had a dramatic way of throwing up her hands at the climax of a story or to punctuate one of her own flashes. It was entirely spontaneous, her spirit seemed merely playing through her body as the Aurora borealis through darkness. And since