HE lay in a gray corner. The walls were gray; the robe which covered the lounge was gray; her peignoir was gray; and so perhaps were her thoughts. Only the thick black hair of her head and the pale skin of her face had definite outline, standing out from the gray background like the head of a swimmer in a misty sea. There was no color anywhere about her, except the two little points of ruby light in her great somber black eyes. One could scarcely tell whether this light was reflected or came mysteriously from within.
She was watching the man in the room beyond, in the library. He sat at a desk, writing, writing. Sometimes he paused to gaze into space, where inspirations lie ready to spring forth at the beckon of the seeing eye. Sometimes his thin fingers burrowed into his blond hair or snarled in and out of his ashen beard. Again, he would lean on his elbows and cover his face with his hands. And ever and anon a wisp of smoke from a discarded cigarette in the ash-tray—an old pewter porringer would curl aslant his beautiful profile, giving an Olympian touch to it.
"Men tire, and women fade," she murmured in an undertone. "But I haven't faded, and he hasn't tired. It's that will-o'-the-wisp. I wonder what I shall have to do? Half-illusions are the most deadly. With a full illusion, one does not think; with no illusion at all one is free. How shall I act to convince him?"
Presently the writer dropped his pencil, rose and walked hastily over to one of the windows.
The woman in gray slid off the lounge. She drifted rather than walked to a spot directly behind him, her chin almost touching his shoulder, and looked out into the diademed night. If he felt her presence, he gave no sign. For several minutes they remained thus. "One never tires of that picture," she said.
"No. It is always beautiful."
The two had many things in common, among which was the rapture of standing on heights. The apartment was on the top floor of a twenty-storied business block in the center of the town. There were two sides, as with this story. One looked out upon the river and the sea, and the other commanded the great thoroughfares, the towers of marble and granite and brick, the lofty, spidery bridges. White stars above the yellow stars below flickered and winked at them, stars celestial and earthly, the white light of peace and the yellow light of turmoil. God's and man's.
"Yes, it is always beautiful up here. Do you remember that snowstorm last winter, how we sat here by this window for two full hours? Was ever anything more exquisite than that white mantle which obliterated the unsightly, which covered the city's scars and wounds?" She laid a hand upon his shoulder, possessively.
"Scars and wounds," he repeated, reaching up and laying his hand on hers. "How like a great city humanity is! Always building up always tearing down, moving and twisting, now beautiful, now ugly; and one by one the landmarks vanish and are forgotten, as you and I shall vanish and be forgotten."
"Read me what you have written, you've been at that desk for three whole hours. Do you want your coffee now? Oh, it will be a great play. The second act was superb."
"You ought to know." He smiled and then looked at his watch. "One o'clock? I didn't know it was so late. Go to bed. Don't bother about the coffee."
"But I want to!"
He caught her by the arms and lightly swung her over toward the desk—with a strength rather astonishing in so slender a body—and tilted the lamp so that the glare of it might cover her. The ruby points of light expanded until her eyes glowed like Burgundy wine in glasses held against candlelight. Her skin was no longer pale but rosy: and her bosom rose up and out with the deep intake of ecstatic breath.
ELMA NORDSTROM was one of those anomalies which sometimes come down from the great north countries. She should have been of heroic mold—her hair blonde as ripe wheat, her eyes as blue as cornflower, Viking's daughter that she was. Instead, she was as a blossom from the valleys of Tuscany.
"Selma, you are like a flame. When I am near you, I am always warm. Those wine-dipped eyes of yours seem to open up every prison door in my mind. You have been my inspiration. To you alone do I owe the fame I have." He took her in his arms and kissed her hair.
"I have always wanted to die in moments like this. You call me a flame. I want to be blown out: I don't want to die ember by ember."
"You mustn't talk like that!"
"Why not? It's the truth."
He turned away abruptly. "I live in heaven and hell alternately."