V.
In Norway the ladies dress with the innocent
purpose of protecting themselves against the
weather; if this purpose is still remotely present
in the toilets of American women of to-day,
it is, at all events, sufficiently disguised to
challenge detection, very much like a primitive
Sanscrit root in its French and English derivatives.
This was the reflection which was uppermost in
Halfdan's mind as Edith, ravishing to behold
in the airy grace of her fragrant morning toilet,
at the appointed time took her seat at his side
before the piano. Her presence seemed so
intense, so all-absorbing, that it left no thought
for the music. A woman, with all the spiritual
mysteries which that name implies, had always
appeared to him rather a composite phenomenon,
even apart from those varied accessories of
dress, in which as by an inevitable analogy, she
sees fit to express the inner multiformity of her
being. Nevertheless, this former conception
of his, when compared to that wonderful
complexity of ethereal lines, colors, tints and half-
tints which go to make up the modern New
York girl, seemed inexpressibly simple, almost
what plain arithmetic must appear to a man who
has mastered calculus.
Edith had opened one of those small red-
covered volumes of Chopin where the rich,
wondrous melodies lie peacefully folded up like
strange exotic flowers in an herbarium. She began
to play the fantasia impromtu, which ought
to be dashed off at a single "heat," whose
passionate impulse hurries it on breathlessly toward
its abrupt finale.
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