A COMMONPLACE MEETING.
Quintard, after an absence of five years, had returned to New York to
find Hermia Suydam the sensation of the year. He saw her first at the
Metropolitan Opera-House, and, overhearing some people discussing her,
followed the direction of their glances. She had never looked more
radiant. Her hair shone across the house like burnished brass; her eyes
had the limpid brilliancy of emeralds, and the black lashes lay heavy
above and below them; her skin was like ivory against which pomegranate
pulp had been crushed, and her mouth was as red as a cactus-flower. Her
neck and arms and a portion of her bust were uncovered. Although it was
a first night and most of her sister belles were present, her peculiar,
somewhat barbaric beauty glittered like a planet in a firmament of
stars.
Quintard left his seat at the end of the second act and walked back and
forth in the lobby until he met Ralph Embury.
“Do you know Miss Suydam?” he asked the lively little journalist.
Embury hastened to assure him that he had the honor of Miss Suydam’s
acquaintance.
“Then introduce me,” said Quintard.
Embury went at once to ask Miss Suydam’s permission for the desired
presentation, and, returning in a few moments, told Quintard to follow
him. Cryder gave his chair to Quintard, and Hermia was very gracious.
She talked in a low, full voice as individual as her beauty—a voice
that suggested the possibility of increasing to infinite volume of
sound—a voice that might shake a hearer with its passion, or grow
hoarse as a sea in a storm. Quintard had never heard just such a voice
before, but he decided—why, he did not define—that the voice suited
its owner.
She said nothing beyond the small-talk born of the conditions of the
moment, but she gave him food for speculation, nevertheless. Had it not
been absurd, he would have said that twice a look of unmistakable terror
flashed through her eyes. She was looking steadily at him upon both
occasions—once he was remarking that he was delighted to get back to
America, and again that he had last seen Tannhäuser at Bayreuth.
He was also perplexed by a vague sense of unreality about her. What it
meant he could not define; she was not an adventuress, nor was her
beauty artificial. While he was working at his problems the curtain went
down on the third act, and she rose to go. She held out her hand to him
with a frank smile and said good-night. When she had put on her wraps
she bent her head to him again and went out of the door. Then she turned
abruptly and walked quickly back to him. The color had spread over her
face, but the expression of terror had not returned to her eyes. They
were almost defiant.
“Come and see me,” she said quickly.
He bowed. “I shall be delighted,” he murmured; but she left before he
had finished.
“She is lovely,” he thought, “but how odd! What is the matter with her?”
* * * * *