Then he saw Gloria. She was sitting at a table for two directly across
the room. Her dress was black, and above it her animated face, tinted
with the most glamourous rose, made, he thought, a spot of poignant
beauty on the room. His heart leaped as though to a new music. He
jostled his way toward her and called her name just as the gray eyes
looked up and found him. For that instant as their bodies met and
melted, the world, the revel, the tumbling whimper of the music faded to
an ecstatic monotone hushed as a song of bees.
"Oh, my Gloria!" he cried.
Her kiss was a cool rill flowing from her heart.
CHAPTER II
A MATTER OF AESTHETICS
On the night when Anthony had left for Camp Hooker one year before, all
that was left of the beautiful Gloria Gilbert--her shell, her young and
lovely body--moved up the broad marble steps of the Grand Central
Station with the rhythm of the engine beating in her ears like a dream,
and out onto Vanderbilt Avenue, where the huge bulk of the Biltmore
overhung, the street and, down at its low, gleaming entrance, sucked in
the many-colored opera-cloaks of gorgeously dressed girls. For a moment
she paused by the taxi-stand and watched them--wondering that but a few
years before she had been of their number, ever setting out for a
radiant Somewhere, always just about to have that ultimate passionate
adventure for which the girls' cloaks were delicate and beautifully
furred, for which their cheeks were painted and their hearts higher than
the transitory dome of pleasure that would engulf them, coiffure,
cloak, and all.
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