han to ours. There was in her something subtle
and fierce; yet overlaying it, like a smooth and silken skin, were the
conventional polish and bearing of an American school graduate. She was,
in deed, noticeably artificial and self-conscious in manner and in the
intonations of her speech; though it was an aesthetic delight to see
her move or pose, and the quality of her voice was music's self. But
Freeman, after due meditation, came to the conclusion that this was the
outcome of her recognition of her own singularity: in trying to be like
other people, she fell into caricature. Freeman, somehow, liked her
the better for it. Like most men of brain and pith, who have seen and
thought much, he was thankful for a new thing, because, so far as it
went, it renewed him. It pleased him to imagine that he could, with a
word or a look, cause this veil of artifice to be thrown aside, and the
primitive passion and fierceness behind it to start forth. He allowed
himself to imagine, with a certain satisfaction, that were he to make
this young woman jealous she would think nothing of thrusting a dagger
between his ribs. Reality,--what a delight it is! The actual touch and
feeling of the spontaneous natural creature have been so buried beneath
centuries of hypocrisy and humbug that we have ceased to believe in them
save as a metaphysical abstraction. But even as water, long depressed
under-ground in perverse channels, surges up to the surface, and above
it, at last, in a fountain of relief, so Nature, after enduring ages
of outrage and banishment, leaps back to her rightful domain in some
individual whom we call extraordinary because he or she is natural.
Grace Parsloe did not seem (regarded as to her temperament and quality)
to belong where she was: therefore she was a delightful incident there.
Had she been met with in the days of the Old Testament, or in the depths
of Persia or India at the present time, even, she might have appeared
commonplace. But here she was in conventional costume, with conventional
manners. And, just as the nautch-girls, and other Oriental dancers and
posturers, wear a costume which suggests nature more effectively than
does nature itself, so did Grace's conventionality suggest to Freeman
the essential absence of conventionality more forcibly than if he had
seen her clad in a turban and translucent caftan, dancing off John the
Baptist's head, or driving a nail into that of Sisera. Grace certainly
owed much of he