A warm mist dimmed her eyes.
"Thank you," she said.
But the waiting men had grown impatient, and she was whirled away in
the arms of a handsome young fellow, conspicuous in a cap of yellow
Siberian wolf-skin. Corliss came back to his companion, feeling
unaccountably good and marvelling at what he had done.
"It's a damned shame." The colonel's eye still followed Lucile, and
Vance understood. "Corliss, I've lived my threescore, and lived them
well, and do you know, woman is a greater mystery than ever. Look at
them, look at them all!" He embraced the whole scene with his eyes.
"Butterflies, bits of light and song and laughter, dancing, dancing
down the last tail-reach of hell. Not only Lucile, but the rest of
them. Look at May, there, with the brow of a Madonna and the tongue of
a gutter-devil. And Myrtle--for all the world one of Gainsborough's
old English beauties stepped down from the canvas to riot out the
century in Dawson's dance-halls. And Laura, there, wouldn't she make a
mother? Can't you see the child in the curve of her arm against her
breast! They're the best of the boiling, I know,--a new country always
gathers the best,--but there's something wrong, Corliss, something
wrong. The heats of life have passed with me, and my vision is truer,
surer. It seems a new Christ must arise and preach a new
salvation--economic or sociologic--in these latter days, it matters
not, so long as it is preached.
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