CHAPTER XIV.

IN A METROPOLITAN JUNGLE.

Cryder called on Hermia Monday afternoon. Although the room was full he had a few words with her, and she thought him very charming.

“I want to talk to you,” he said. “I have wanted to talk to you ever since I met you, but I was in such a bad humor the other night that I would not inflict you. Are you ever alone? Cannot I have an hour or two some evening?”

Hermia smiled. “Come on Thursday evening. I have not another evening until late next week.”

“I have an engagement, but I will break it. And will you think me impertinent if I ask you to show me all over this wonderful house? There is nothing like it in Europe.”

“I shall be delighted,” said Hermia, enthusiastically. “So few people appreciate it.”

“It is good of you to think I can. But in thought I always dwell in the past (he hated the past), and although my work is realistic, because realism is of more value to literature, yet my nature is essentially a romantic one. Only, one so seldom acknowledges romance, one is so afraid of being laughed at.”

He watched her as he spoke, and saw a sudden gleam come into her eyes. A year’s training and her own native cleverness had taught Hermia not to believe all that men said to her, but Cryder had struck a well-loved chord. And she had no wish to be skeptical.

On Thursday evening Hermia arrayed herself with great care. After much deliberation she donned a gown which as yet she had never worn. It was of tan-gold velvet, with irregular appliqués of dark-brown plush. Down the front was a curious design of gold braid and deep-green brilliants.

She received Cryder in the conservatory. It had but recently been completed, and looked enough like a jungle to deceive the most suspicious of tigers. The green tiles of the floor were painted with a rank growth of grasses and ferns. Through the palms and tropical shrubs that crowded the conservatory glared the wild beasts of far-off jungles, marvelously stuffed and poised. The walls were forgotten behind a tapestry of reeds and birds of the Orient. In one corner was a fountain, simulating a pool, and on its surface floated the pink, fragrant lilies that lie on eastern lakes. Few people had seen this jungle—before its completion, Hermia had learned that it was dangerous to test her city’s patience too far.

Hermia sat down on a bank and waited for the curtain to rise. She felt the humor of the situation, but she knew that the effect was good. A few moments later Cryder came in and was charmed. He had the same remote yearning for the barbaric that the small, blonde actor has for the part of the heavy villain. As he walked down the jungle toward Hermia, he felt that he gave this Eastern ideal its completing touch.

Hermia held up her hand. “I would not have dared do this for any one but you,” she said, “but you will understand.”

“For Heaven’s sake do not apologize!” exclaimed Cryder. He raised her hand to his lips and sat down on the bank beside her. “There was never anything so enchanting in real life. And you—you are Cleopatra in your tiger-hood.”

“I was Semiramis before,” said Hermia, indifferently. She turned her head and gave him a meditative glance. “Do you know,” she said, with an instinct of coquetry rare to her, “I cannot understand your being a realistic author.”

He was somewhat taken aback, but he replied promptly: “That is a mere accident. To tell you the truth, I care no more for realism than I do for idealism, and dialect is a frightful bore. I will tell you what I have told no one else. Now that my position is established, my name made, I am going to leave dialect to those who can do no better, and write a great romantic novel.”

Hermia thought his last remark a trifle conceited, but she forgave it for the sake of its sentiment. “I shall like that,” she said, “and be romantic without sensationalism. Tell me the plot of your book.”

“It is too vague to formulate, but you and your house are to be its inspiration. I have wanted to meet a woman like you; the study will be an education. Tell me of your life. You have not always been as you are now?”

Hermia gave him a startled glance. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

“I mean that you have two personalities, an actual and an assumed. You are playing a part.”

Hermia gave him a fierce glance from beneath her black brows. “You know that until a year ago I was poor and obscure, and you are rude enough to remind me that I play the part of _grande dame_ very badly,” she exclaimed.

“I beg your pardon,” said Cryder, quickly, “I knew nothing of the kind. You might have spent the last ten years in a fashionable boarding-school for all I have heard to the contrary. But I repeat what I said. I received two impressions the night we met. One was that you were at war with something or somebody; the other that you had a double personality, and that of one the world had no suspicion. It is either that you have a past, or that you are at present in conditions entirely new and consequently unfamiliar. I believe it is the latter. You do not look like a woman who has _lived_. There is just one thing wanting to make your face the most remarkable I have seen; but until it gets that it will be like a grand painting whose central figure has been left as the last work of the artist.”

Hermia leaned her elbow on her knee and covered her face with her hand. She experienced the most pleasurable sensation she had ever known. This was the first man who had shown the faintest insight into her contradictory personality and complicated nature. For the moment she forgot where she was, and she gave a little sigh which brought the blood to her face. To love would not be so difficult as she had imagined.

“What is it?” asked Cryder, gently. He had been watching her covertly. “I want to amend something I said a moment ago. You have not lived in fact but you have in imagination, and the men your fancy has created have made those of actual, prosaic life appear tame and colorless.”

Hermia’s heart gave a bound. She turned to him with shining eyes. “How do you know that?” she murmured.

“Is it not true?”

“Yes,” she said, helplessly, “it is true.”

“Then I will tell you how I know. Because I have lived half my natural life with the population of my brain, and dream-people know one another. Ours have met and shaken hands while we have been exchanging platitudes.”

“That is very pretty,” said Hermia; “I hope their estates border upon each other, and that their chosen landscape is the same, for dream-people may have their antipathies, like the inhabitants of the visible world. Because we have taken out our title-deeds in dream-land, it does not follow that our tenants live in harmony.”

“It would not—except that we both instinctively know that there has not been even border warfare. There have been marriage and inter-marriage; the princes of my reigning house have demanded in state——”

Hermia interrupted him harshly: “There is no marriage or giving in marriage in my kingdom. I hate the word! Are you very much shocked?”

Cryder smiled. “No,” he said, “one is surprised sometimes to hear one’s own dearest theories in the mouth of another, but not shocked. It only needed that to make you the one woman I have wanted to know. You have that rarest gift among women—a catholic mind. And it does not spring from immorality or vulgar love of excitement—you are simply brave and original.”

Hermia leaned forward, her pupils dilating until her eyes looked like rings of marsh about lakes of ink. “You know that—you understand that?” she whispered, breathlessly.

Cryder looked her full in the eyes. “Yes,” he said, “and no one ever did before.”

His audacity had the desired effect. Men were always a little afraid of Hermia. She looked at him without speaking—a long gaze which he returned. He was certainly most attractive, although in quite a different way from any man born of her imaginings. Perhaps, however, that gave him the charm of novelty. He was almost magnetic; he almost thrilled her—not quite, but that would come later. She had received so many impressions this evening that no one could master her. Yes, she was sure she was going to love him.

“No,” she said, at last, “no one ever did.”

“You have been loved in a great many ways,” Cryder went on; “for your beauty, which appeals to the senses of men, yet which at the same time frightens them, because of the tragic element which is as apparent as the passionate; for your romantic surroundings, which appeal to their sentiment; for the glamour which envelops you as one of the most sought-after women in New York; for your intellect; and for your incomprehensibility to the average mind, which has the fascination of mystery. But I doubt if any man has ever known or cared whether you have a psychic side. If I fall in love with you, I shall love your soul, primarily. Passion is merely the expression of spiritual exaltation. Independently of the latter it is base. A woman of your strong psychical nature could never forget the soul for the body—not for a moment.”

“That is very beautiful,” murmured Hermia, dreamily. “Can it be? And are you sure that I have any spirituality?”

“If you do not know it, it is because you have never loved and never been loved in the right way.” He sprang suddenly to his feet, and then, before she could answer, he was gone.

She sank her elbow into a cushion and leaned her cheek on her palm. Cryder had touched her sensuous nature by the artistic novelty of his wooing—her ideal had been brutal and direct. She had always imagined she should like that best, but this was a new idea and very charming. It appealed to the poetic element in her. The poetic vase tossed aloft the spray of refined passion and rode contemptuously over the undertow of sensuality. That was as it should be.

She went up-stairs, and, after she was in bed, thought for a long time. She slept until late the next day, and in the afternoon paid a number of calls. In the temporary seclusion of her carriage she took pleasure in assuring herself that Cryder was uppermost in her mind.

* * * * *