e been harnessed, came back into my mind. I turned its
injustice over and over beneath the light which the total Hortense now
shed upon it--or rather, not the total Hortense, but my whole impression
of her, as far as I had got; I got a good deal further before we had
finished. To the slow, soft accompaniment of these gliding river shores,
where all the shadows had changed since morning, so that new loveliness
stood revealed at every turn, my thoughts dwelt upon this perfected
specimen of the latest American moment--so late that she contained
nothing of the past, and a great deal of to-morrow. I basked myself
in the memory of her achieved beauty, her achieved dress, her achieved
insolence, her luxurious complexity. She was even later than those quite
late athletic girls, the Amazons of the links, whose big, hard football
faces stare at one from public windows and from public punts, whose
giant, manly strides take them over leagues of country and square miles
of dance-floor, and whose bursting, blatant, immodest health glares upon
sea-beaches and round supper tables. Hortense knew that even now the
hour of such is striking, and that the American boy will presently turn
with relief to a creature who will more clearly remind him that he is a
man and that she is a woman.

But why was the insolence of Hortense offensive, when the insolence
of Eliza La Heu was not? Both these extremely feminine beings could
exercise that quality in profusion, whenever they so wished; wherein did
the difference lie? Perhaps I thought, in the spirit of its exercise;
Eliza was merely insolent when she happened to feel like it; and man
has always been able to forgive woman for that--whether the angels do or
not, but Hortense, the world-wise, was insolent to all people who could
not be of use to her; and all I have to say is, that if the angels can
forgive them, they're welcome; I can't!

Had I made sure of anything at the landing? Yes; Hortense didn't care
for Charley in the least, and never would. A woman can stamp her foot
at a man and love him simultaneously; but those two light taps, and
the measure that her eyes took of Charley, meant that she must love his
possessions very much to be able to bear him at all.

Then, what was her feeling about John Mayrant? As Beverly had said, what
could she want him for? He hadn't a thing that she valued or needed. His
old-time notions of decency, the clean simplicity of his make, his good
Southern positio