and admiration.

The woman, disregarding his silent salutation, continued to stare at him
wild-eyed, as a damned soul in purgatory might look at Satan passing in
regal splendour through the seventy times sevenfold circles of hell.

Reginald Clarke walked on unconcernedly through the rows of gay diners,
still smiling, affable, calm. But his companion bethought himself of
certain rumours he had heard concerning Ethel Brandenbourg's mad love
for the man from whose features she could not even now turn her eyes.
Evidently her passion was unreciprocated. It had not always been so.
There was a time in her career, some years ago in Paris, when it was
whispered that she had secretly married him and, not much later,
obtained a divorce. The matter was never cleared up, as both preserved
an uncompromising silence upon the subject of their matrimonial
experience. Certain it was that, for a space, the genius of Reginald
Clarke had completely dominated her brush, and that, ever since he had
thrown her aside, her pictures were but plagiarisms of her former
artistic self.

The cause of the rupture between them was a matter only of surmise; but
the effect it had on the woman testified clearly to the remarkable power
of Reginald Clarke. He had entered her life and, behold! the world was
transfixed on her canvases in myriad hues of transcending radiance; he
had passed from it, and with him vanished the brilliancy of her
colouring, as at sunset the borrowed amber and gold fade from the face
of the clouds.

The glamour of Clarke's name may have partly explained the secret of his
charm, but, even in circles where literary fame is no passport, he
could, if he chose, exercise an almost terrible fascination. Subtle and
profound, he had ransacked the coffers of mediaeval dialecticians and
plundered the arsenals of the Sophists. Many years later, when the
vultures of misfortune had swooped down upon him, and his name was no
longer mentioned without a sneer, he was still remembered in New York
drawing-rooms as the man who had brought to perfection the art of
talking. Even to dine with him was a liberal education.

Clarke's marvellous conversational power was equalled only by his
marvellous style. Ernest Fielding's heart leaped in him at the thought
that henceforth he would be privileged to live under one roof with the
only writer of his generation who could lend to the English language the
rich strength and rugged music of the Elizabethans.