"Man is for woman made, And woman made for man As the spur is for the jade, As the scabbard for the blade, As for liquor is the can, So man's for woman made, And woman made for man."THE HERO STUDIES THE MONA LISA SMILE IN ITS PROPER SETTING. INCIDENTALLY, HE MEETS AN EMPIRE BUILDERSince James was not courting observation he took as inconspicuous a way as possible to The Brakes. He was irritably conscious of the incongruity of his elaborate afternoon dress with the habits of democratic Verden, which had been too busy "boosting" itself into a great city, or at least one in the making, to have found time to establish as yet a leisure class.
Leaving the car at the entrance to Lakeview Park, he cut across it by sinuous byways where madronas and alders isolated him from the twilit green of the open lawn. Though it was still early the soft winter dusk of the Pacific Northwest was beginning to render objects indistinct. This perhaps may have been the reason he failed to notice the skulking figure among the trees that dogged him to his destination.
James laughed at himself for the exaggerated precaution he took to cover a perfectly defensible action. Why shouldn't he visit at the house ofP.C. Frome? Entirely clear as to his right, he yet preferred his call not to become a matter of public gossip. For he did not need to be told that there would be ugly rumors if it should get out that Big Tim had called at his office for a conference and he had subsequently been seen going to The Brakes. Dunderheads not broad enough to separate social from political intercourse would be quick to talk unpleasantly about it.
Deflecting from the path into a carriage driveway, he came through a woody hollow to the rear of The Brakes. The grounds were spacious, rolling toward the road beyond in a falling sweep of wellkept lawn. He skirted the green till he came to a "raveled walk that zig-zagged up through the grass, leaving to the left the rough fern-clad bluff that gave the place its name.
The man who let him in had apparently received his instructions, forhe led Farnum to a rather small room in the rear of the big house. Its single occupant was reclining luxuriantly among a number of pillows on a lounge. From her lips a tiny spiral of smoke rose like incense to the ceiling. James was conscious of a little ripple of surprise as he looked down upon the copper crown of splendid hair above which rested the thin nimbus of smoke. He had expected a less intimate reception.
But the astonishment had been sponged from his face before Valencia Van Tyle rose and came forward, cigarette in hand.
"You did find time."
"Was it likely I wouldn't?"
"How should I know?" her little shrug seemed to say with an indifference that bordered on insolence.
James was piqued. After all then she had not opened to him the door to her friendship. She was merely amusing herself with him as a provincial_pis aller._
Perhaps she saw his disappointment, for she added with a touch of warmth: "I'm glad you came. Truth is, I'm bored to death of myself.""Then I ought to be welcome, for if I don't exorcise the devils of ennui you can now blame me.""I shall. Try that big chair, and one of these Egyptians."He helped himself to a cigarette and lit up as casually as if he had been in the habit of smoking in the lounging rooms of the ladies he knew. She watched him sink lazily into the chair and let his glance go wandering over the room. In his face she read the indolent sense of pleasure he found in sharing so intimately this sanctum of her more personal life.
The room was a bit barbaric in its warmth of color, as barbaric as was the young woman herself in spite of her super-civilization. The walls, done in an old rose, were gilded and festooned to meet a ceiling almost Venetian in its scheme of decoration. Pink predominated in the brocaded tapestries and in the rugs, and the furniture was a luxurious modern compromise with the Louis Quinze. There were flowers in profusion--his gaze fell upon the American Beauties he had sent an hour or two ago--and a disorder of popular magazines and French novels. Farnum did not need to be told that the room was as much an exotic as its mistress.
"You think?" her amused voice demanded when his eyes came back to her. "that the room seems made especially for you."She volunteered information. "My uncle gave me a free hand to arrange and decorate it."As he looked at her, smoking daintily in the fling of the fire glow, every inch the pampered heiress of the ages, his blood quickened to an appreciation of the sensuous charm of sex she breathed forth so indifferently. The clinging crepe-de-chine-- except in public she did not pretend even to a conventional mourning for the scamp whose name she bore lent accent to her soft, rounded curves, and the slow, regular rise and fall of her breathing beneath the filmy lace promised a perfect fullness of bust and throat. He was keenly responsive to the physical allure of sex, and Valencia Van Tyle was endowed with more than her share of magnetic aura.
"You have expressed yourself. It's like you," he said with finality.
Her tawny eyes met his confident appraisal ironically. "Indeed! You know then what I am like?""One uses his eyes, and such brains as heaven has granted him," he ventured lightly.
"And what am I like?" she asked indolently.
"I'm hoping to know that better soon--I merely guess now.""They say all women are egoists--and some men." She breathed her soft inscrutable ripple of laughter. "Let me hasten to confess, and crave a picture of myself.""But the subject deserves an artist," he parried.
"He's afraid," she murmured to the fire. "He makes and unmakes senators--this Warwick; but he's afraid of a girl."James lit a fresh cigarette in smiling silence.
"He has met me once--twice--no, three times," she meditated aloud. "But he knows what I'm like. He boasts of his divination and when one puts him to the test he repudiates.""All I should have claimed is that I know I don't know what you are like.""Which is something," she conceded.
