I gave the necessary orders and went in to my work. I merely sat and stared at the half-written sheet of foolscap on the desk, unable to concentrate my thoughts. I am a most moderate man, a philosopher, I hope, and yet today I felt possessed, it seemed, of an insensate desire to burst forth into profanity--a fine attitude of mind for a contemplative morning! My whole world was turned suddenly upside down.
But out of chaos cosmos returned. I had given up the thought of work, but at last found satisfaction in a quiet analysis of Jerry's narration of the night before. What did one female or two or a dozen matter if Jerry was fundamentally sound? Sophistry might shake, blandishment bend, sex-affinity blight, but Jerry would stand like an oak, its young leaves among the stars, its roots deep in mother earth. Marcia Van Wyck, her black damask boudoirs, her tinted finger tips, her Freud, Strindberg and all the rest of her modern trash--there would come a day when Jerry would laugh at them!
I think I must have dozed in my chair, for I seemed to hear voices, and, opening my eyes, beheld Jerry in my Soorway, a laughing group in the hall behind him.
"'Even the worthy Homer sometimes nods,'" he was quoting gayly. "Wake up, Roger. Visitors!"
I started to my feet in much embarrassment. "Miss Van Wyck, Miss Gore--Mr. Canby," said Jerry, and I found myself bowing to a very handsome young person, dressed in an outdoor suit of a vivid, cherry color. I had no time to study her carefully at the moment, but took the hand she thrust forward and muttered something.
"I feel very guilty," she was saying. "It's all my fault, Mr. Canby. I've been simply wild for years to see what was inside the wall."
"I hope it will not disappoint you," I said urbanely.
"It's very wonderful. I don't wonder Jerry never wanted to leave. I shouldn't have gone--ever. A wall around one's own particular Paradise! Could anything be more rapturous?"
The tone was thin, gentle and studiously sweet, and her face, I am forced to admit, was comely. Its contour was oval, slightly accented at the cheek bones, and its skin was white and very smooth. Her lips were sensitive and scarlet, like an open wound. Her eyes, relics, like the cheek bones, of a distant Slav progenitor, were set very slightly at an angle and were very dark, of what color I couldn't at the moment decide, but I was sure that their expression was remarkable. They were cool, appraising, omniscient and took me in with a casual politeness which neglected nothing that might have been significant. I am not one of those who find mystery and enigma in women's reticences, which are too often merely the evasions of ignorance or duplicity. But I admit that this girl Marcia puzzled me. Her characteristics clashed--cool eyes with sensual lips, clear voice with languid gestures, a pagan--that was how she impressed me then, a pagan chained by convention.