She looked around the table for her singular
acquaintance of an hour before, but she had not seen him since. She
would have spoken about him to Somers, but she had an instinctive
idea that the latter would be antipathetic, in spite of the stranger's
flattering commendation. So she found herself again following Somers's
cynical but good-humored description of the various guests, and, I
fear, seeing with his eyes, listening with his ears, and occasionally
participating in his superior attitude. The "fearful joy" she had found
in the novelty of the situation and the originality of the actors seemed
now quite right from this critical point of view. So she learned how the
guest with the long hair was an unknown painter, to whom Rushbrook had
given a commission for three hundred yards of painted canvas, to be cut
up and framed as occasion and space required, in Rushbrook's new
hotel in San Francisco; how the gray-bearded foreigner near him was an
accomplished bibliophile who was furnishing Mr.
Pages:
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259