... Time fugued. Being no longer under the obligation of visiting Dora
since the shindy he had made in her home, Ulick became truly intimate
with Mona. They lived like sensible married people. They walked in the
park. They went to the theatre, to concerts and the opera. They met
every afternoon. At least three times a week Mona took luncheon at the
Maison Felicé. She was not noticed there any more than the other ladies
who came with their lovers. She would then go afterward to Ulick's
rooms where he played Chopin for her, read to her, made love to her;
passionate love. She had revised that first hasty judgment and now
found the life sensual an entrancing experience. She had confessed to
him her disappointments, and for answer he read aloud Stendhal's Lamiel
that extraordinary unfinished fiction, with Lamiel's similar adventure.
"Is that all?" asks this disconcerting heroine, after she had bribed
with silver a stout peasant lad to induct her into the mystery of sex.
This episode revolted Mona, who saw in love, but one object--children.
Ulick realized now it was maternity suppressed that had sent her to him
knocking at his closed door. Love with her was not only a sensation,
but also a sentiment. She was not a sentimental girl. She loved Ulick,
but she loved children more. "The sacred wound of maternity" was a
phrase that appealed to her; it was thus she had heard called the
semi-mysterious function of the lunar sex; that sex upon which the moon
had impressed its rhythms. Mona, under the skin, was a matter-of-fact
woman for whom Mother Nature could do no wrong. She loved children,
and in default of them she delighted in the poetic fiction of
dream-children. Ulick had only to pronounce the names of Grane and
Shamus to see her face swept as if by joyful news. Temperamentally she
was elected to happy motherhood. This idea caused him much disquietude.
* * * * *
With intense interest he read of Easter's début at Munich. She had sung
Isolde with immense success. The cables were choked with stories of her
brilliant singing, dramatic acting. The three Brunnhildes followed,
and a few weeks later a royal command came from Baireuth; Queen Cosima
graciously permitted the American girl to be a "guest" for a week.
Again--Isolde, Brunnhilde, and most startling of all--Kundry. She
would be the first American to sing in Parsifal at Baireuth. After
that, offers from Paris, Berlin, London, and no doubt, from New York.
But the Metropolitan House management was impenetrable. Easter had
changed her name to Istar.... Istar the daughter of sin! chuckled
Alfred Stone....