him taller, and freer in all her movements. She had now a way of taking
a deep breath when she was interested, that made her seem very strong,
somehow, and brought her at one quite overpoweringly. If he seemed shy,
it was not that he was intimidated by her worldly clothes, but that her
greater positiveness, her whole augmented self, made him feel that his
accustomed manner toward her was inadequate.

Fred, on his part, was reflecting that the awkward position in which he
had placed her would not confine or chafe her long. She looked about at
other people, at other women, curiously. She was not quite sure of
herself, but she was not in the least afraid or apologetic. She seemed
to sit there on the edge, emerging from one world into another, taking
her bearings, getting an idea of the concerted movement about her, but
with absolute self-confidence. So far from shrinking, she expanded. The
mere kindly effort to please Dr. Archie was enough to bring her out.

There was much talk of aurae at that time, and Fred mused that every
beautiful, every compellingly beautiful woman, had an aura, whether
other people did or no. There was, certainly, about the woman he had
brought up from Mexico, such an emanation. She existed in more space
than she occupied by measurement. The enveloping air about her head and
shoulders was subsidized--was more moving than she herself, for in it
lived the awakenings, all the first sweetness that life kills in people.
One felt in her such a wealth of JUGENDZEIT, all those flowers of the
mind and the blood that bloom and perish by the myriad in the few
exhaustless years when the imagination first kindles. It was in watching
her as she emerged like this, in being near and not too near, that one
got, for a moment, so much that one had lost; among other legendary
things the legendary theme of the absolutely magical power of a
beautiful woman.

After they had left Thea at her hotel, Dr. Archie admitted to Fred, as
they walked up Broadway through the rapidly chilling air, that once
before he had seen their young friend flash up into a more potent self,
but in a darker mood. It was in his office one night, when she was at
home the summer before last. "And then I got the idea," he added simply,
"that she would not live like other people: that, for better or worse,
she had uncommon gifts."

"Oh, we'll see that it's for better, you and I," Fred reassured him.
"Won't you come up to my hotel with me? I think w