The Call of the Blood
Page 7Hermione laughed, winking away two tears.
"Well, Emile dear, I'm being very simply a woman now, I assure you."
"And why should I be surprised? You're right. What is it makes me
surprised?"
He sat considering.
"Perhaps it is that you are so unusual, so individual, that my
imagination refuses to project the man on whom your choice could fall. I
project the snuffy professor--Impossible! I project the Greek god--again
my mind cries, 'Impossible!' Yet, behold, it is in very truth the Greek
god, the ideal of the ordinary woman."
"You know nothing about it. You're shooting arrows into the air."
"I can't. You pretend to know a woman, and you ask her coldly to explain
to you the attraction of the man she loves, to dissect it. I won't try
to."
"But," he said, with now a sort of joking persistence, which was only a
mask for an almost irritable curiosity, "I want to know."
"And you shall. Maurice and I are dining to-night at Caminiti's in
Peathill Street, just off Regent Street. Come and meet us there, and
we'll all three spend the evening together. Half-past eight, of course no
evening dress, and the most delicious Turkish coffee in London."
"Does Monsieur Delarey like Turkish coffee?"
"Intelligently?"
"How do you mean?"
"Does he love it inherently, or because you do?"
"You can find that out to-night."
"I shall come."
He got up, put his pipe into a case, and the case into his pocket, and
said: "Hermione, if the analyst may have a word--"
"Yes--now."
"Don't let Monsieur Delarey, whatever his character, see now, or in the
future, the dirty little beggar staring at the angel. I use your own
true to the good in their characters. Humble adoration from a woman like
you would be destructive of blessed virtues in Antinous. Think well of
yourself, my friend, think well of your sphinxlike eyes. Haven't they
beauty? Doesn't intellect shoot its fires from them? Mon Dieu! Don't let
me see any prostration to-night, or I shall put three grains of something
I know--I always call it Turkish delight--into the Turkish coffee of
Monsieur Delarey, and send him to sleep with his fathers."
Hermione got up and held out her hands to him impulsively.
"Bless you, Emile!" she said. "You're a--"