Athalie

It was in the days when nothing physical tainted her passionate

attachment to Clive. When she was with him she enjoyed the moment with

all her heart and soul--gave to it and to him everything that was best

in her--all the richness of her mental and bodily vigour, all the

unspoiled enthusiasm of her years, all the sturdy freshness of youth,

eager, receptive, credulous, unsatiated.

With them, once more, the old happy companionship began; the Cafe

Arabesque, the Regina, the theatres, the suburban restaurants knew

them again. Familiar faces among the waiters welcomed them to the same

tables; the same ushers guided them through familiar aisles; the same

taxi drivers touched their caps with the same alacrity; the same

porters bestirred themselves for tips.

Sometimes when they were not alone, they and their friends danced late

at Castle House or the Sans-Souci, or the Humming-Bird, or some such

resort, at that time in vogue.

Sometimes on Saturday afternoons or on Sundays and holidays they spent

hours in the museums and libraries--not that Clive had either

inherited or been educated to any truer appreciation of things worth

while than the average New York man--but like the majority he admitted

the solemnity and fearsomeness of art and letters, and his attitude

toward them was as carefully respectful as it was in church.

Which first perplexed and then amused Athalie who, with no

opportunities, had been born with a wholesome passion for all things

beautiful of the mind.

The little she knew she had learned from books or from her

companionship with Captain Dane that first summer after Clive had gone

abroad. And there was nothing orthodox, nothing pedantic, nothing

simulated or artificial in her likes or dislikes, her preferences or

her indifference.

Yet, somehow, even without knowing, the girl instinctively gravitated

toward all things good.

In modern art--with the exception of a few painters--she found little

to attract her; but the magnificence of the great Venetians, the

sombre splendour of the great Spaniards, the nobility of the great

English and Dutch masters held her with a spell forever new. And, as

for the exquisite, naively self-conscious works of Greuze, Lancret,

Fragonard, Boucher, Watteau, and Nattier, she adored them with all the

fresh and natural appetite of a capacity for visual pleasure unjaded.

He recognised Raphael with respect and pleasure when authority

reassured him it was Raphael. Also he probably knew more about the

history of art than did she. Otherwise it was Athalie who led,

instinctively, toward what gallery and library held as their best.

Her favourite lingering places were amid the immortal Chinese

porcelains and the masterpieces of the Renaissance. And thither she

frequently beguiled Clive,--not that he required any persuading to

follow this young and lovely creature who ranged the full boundaries

of her environment, living to the full life as it had been allotted

her.