With trained eye and carefully acquired skill, he studied
the scene; impressing upon his memory every detail--the rich appointments
of the room; the glittering lights; the gleaming silver and crystal; the
sparkling jewels and shimmering laces; the bare shoulders; the
wine-flushed faces and feverish eyes; and, in the seat of honor, the
disease-wasted form and repulsive, sin-marked countenance of Mr. Taine
who--almost unconscious with his exertion--was still feeding the last
flickering flame of his lustful life with the vision of the girl whose
beauty his toast had profaned: and in the midst of that
company--expressing as it did the spirit of an age that is ruled by
material wealth and dominated by the passions of the flesh--the center of
every eye, yet, still, in her purity and innocence, removed and apart from
them all; standing in her simple dress of white against the background of
flowers--the mountain girl with her violin--offering to them the highest,
holiest, gift of the gods--her music. Upon the girl's lovely, winsome
face, was a look, now, of troubled doubt. Her wide, blue eyes, as she
played, were pleading, questioning, half fearful--as though she sensed,
instinctively the presence of the spirit she could not understand; and
felt, in spite of the pretense of the applause that had greeted her, the
rejection of her offering.
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