The mansion he had long since grown to
recognize as an expression of the personality of its owner, but this
classic bower was as remote from it as though it were in Greece. He was
sensitive to beauty, yet the beauty of the place had a perplexing
quality, which he felt in the perfect curves of the marble bench, in the
marble basin brimming to the tip with clear water,--the surface of which,
flecked with pink petals, mirrored the azure sky through the leafy
network of the roof. In one green recess a slender Mercury hastily
adjusted his sandal.

Was this, her art, the true expression of her baffling personality? As
she had leaned back in the corner of the automobile she had given him the
impression of a languor almost Oriental, but this had been startlingly
dispelled at the lunch-table by the revelation of an animation and a
vitality which had magically transformed her. But now, as under the
spell of a new encompassment of her own weaving, she seemed to revert to
her former self, sinking, relaxed, into a wicker lounge beside the basin,
one long and shapely hand in the water, the other idle in her lap. Her
eyes, he remarked, were the contradiction in her face. Had they been
larger, and almond-shaped, the illusion might have been complete. They
were neither opaque nor smouldering,--but Western eyes, amber-coloured,
with delicately stencilled rays and long lashes. And as they gazed up at
him now they seemed to reflect, without disclosing the flitting thoughts
behind them. He felt antagonism and attraction in almost equal degree
--the situation transcended his experience.

"You don't intend to change this?" he asked, with an expressive sweep of
his hand.

"No," she said, "I've always liked it. Tell me what you feel about it."

He hesitated.

"You resent it," she declared.

"Why do you say that?" he demanded quickly.

"I feel it," she answered calmly, but with a smile.

"'Resent' would scarcely be the proper word," he contended, returning her
smile, yet hesitating again.

"You think it pagan," she told him.

"Perhaps I do," he answered simply, as though impressed by her felicitous
discovery of the adjective.

Alison laughed.

"It's pagan because I'm pagan, I suppose."

"It's very beautiful--you have managed to get an extraordinary
atmosphere," he continued, bent on doing himself an exact justice. But
I should say, if you pressed me, that it represents to me the deification
of beauty to the exclusion of all else