image, who
desires to read with the senses as well as with the reason, is entreated
not to forget that he prolonged his consonants and swallowed his vowels,
that he was guilty of elisions and interpolations which were equally
unexpected, and that his discourse was pervaded by something sultry and
vast, something almost African in its rich, basking tone, something that
suggested the teeming expanse of the cotton-field. Mrs. Luna looked up
at all this, but saw only a part of it; otherwise she would not have
replied in a bantering manner, in answer to his inquiry: "Are you ever
different from this?" Mrs. Luna was familiar--intolerably familiar.

Basil Ransom coloured a little. Then he said: "Oh yes; when I dine out I
usually carry a six-shooter and a bowie-knife." And he took up his hat
vaguely--a soft black hat with a low crown and an immense straight brim.
Mrs. Luna wanted to know what he was doing. She made him sit down; she
assured him that her sister quite expected him, would feel as sorry as
she could ever feel for anything--for she was a kind of fatalist,
anyhow--if he didn't stay to dinner. It was an immense pity--she herself
was going out; in Boston you must jump at invitations. Olive, too, was
going somewhere after dinner, but he mustn't mind that; perhaps he would
like to go with her. It wasn't a party--Olive didn't go to parties; it
was one of those weird meetings she was so fond of.

"What kind of meetings do you refer to? You speak as if it were a
rendezvous of witches on the Brocken."

"Well, so it is; they are all witches and wizards, mediums, and
spirit-rappers, and roaring radicals."

Basil Ransom stared; the yellow light in his brown eyes deepened. "Do
you mean to say your sister's a roaring radical?"

"A radical? She's a female Jacobin--she's a nihilist. Whatever is, is
wrong, and all that sort of thing. If you are going to dine with her,
you had better know it."

"Oh, murder!" murmured the young man vaguely, sinking back in his chair
with his arms folded. He looked at Mrs. Luna with intelligent
incredulity. She was sufficiently pretty; her hair was in clusters of
curls, like bunches of grapes; her tight bodice seemed to crack with her
vivacity; and from beneath the stiff little plaits of her petticoat a
small fat foot protruded, resting upon a stilted heel. She was
attractive and impertinent, especially the latter. He seemed to think it
was a great pity, what she had told him; but he lost himself