Deliberately he gave his mind a surface which should shed
promiscuous invitation, and folded his lips, as it were, against the
rising of the curtain. He thought of Hilda separately, and he looked for
her upon the boards with the _naivete_ of a desire to see the woman he
knew.
When finally he did see her she made before him a picture that was to
remain with him always as his last impression of an art from which in
all its manifestations on that night he definitely turned. From the
aigrette in her hair to the paste buckle on her shoe she was _mondaine_.
Her dress, of some indefinite, slight white material, clasped at the
waist with a belt that gave the beam of turquoises and the gleam of
silver, ministered as much to the capricious ideal of the moment as to
the lines and curves of the person it adorned. The set was the
inevitable modern drawing-room, and she sat well out on a sofa with her
hands, in long black gloves, resting stiffly, palm downward, on each
side of her. It was as if she pushed her body forward in an impulse to
rise: her rigid arms thrust her shoulders up a little and accented the
swell of her bosom. It was a vivid, a staccato attitude. It expressed a
temperament, a character, fifty other things, but especially epitomised
the restraints and the licenses of a world of drawing-rooms.
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