Don't belong to that class of duffers anyway. I don't
like masculine women, or hard women--run from a lot of our girls that are
so hard a diamond wouldn't cut 'em. But I've got an elder sister--she's
thirty now--who's the cleverest woman I ever met, although she doesn't
pretend to do anything. She won't bother with any but clever and
exceptional people--has something of a salon. My parents hate it--she lives
alone in a flat in London--but they can't help it. My grandfather Doubleton
liked her a lot and left her two thousand a year. I wish you knew her. She
is charming and feminine, as much so as any of those I met at the ball; and
so are many of the women that go to her flat--"
"Don't you think I am feminine?" asked Gora irrisistibly. He had a way
of making her feel, quite abruptly, as if she had run a needle under her
fingernail.
Once more he turned to her his detached but keen young eyes.
"Well...not exactly in the sense I mean. You look too much the
fighter...but that may be purely the result of circumstances," he added
hastily: the strange eyes under their heavy down-drawn browns were lowering
at him. "You are not masculine, no, not a bit."
Once more Miss Dwight curled her upper lip. "I wonder if you would have
said the first part of that if you had met me at the Hofer ball and I had
worn a gown of flame-colored chiffon and satin, and my hair marcelled like
every other woman present--except those embalmed relics of the seventies,
who, I have heard, rise from the grave whenever a great ball is given,
and appear in a built-up red-brown wig.
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