It was ten o'clock. The Sunday Times, scattered about his feet,
proclaimed by rotogravure and editorial, by social revelation and
sporting sheet, that the world had been tremendously engrossed during
the past week in the business of moving toward some splendid if somewhat
indeterminate goal. For his part Anthony had been once to his
grandfather's, twice to his broker's, and three times to his
tailor's--and in the last hour of the week's last day he had kissed a
very beautiful and charming girl.
When he reached home his imagination had been teeming with high pitched,
unfamiliar dreams. There was suddenly no question on his mind, no
eternal problem for a solution and resolution. He had experienced an
emotion that was neither mental nor physical, nor merely a mixture of
the two, and the love of life absorbed him for the present to the
exclusion of all else. He was content to let the experiment remain
isolated and unique. Almost impersonally he was convinced that no woman
he had ever met compared in any way with Gloria. She was deeply herself;
she was immeasurably sincere--of these things he was certain. Beside her
the two dozen schoolgirls and debutantes, young married women and waifs
and strays whom he had known were so many females, in the word's most
contemptuous sense, breeders and bearers, exuding still that faintly
odorous atmosphere of the cave and the nursery.
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