CHAPTER XXV.

THE POWER OF PERSONALITY.

A few evenings later Quintard came with a portion of his book, which he had had type-written for her. While he amused himself with the many rare volumes on the library shelves, Hermia read the introduction and the four tales with equal interest and astonishment. They had a vital power which seemed to grip her mind as with a palpable hand and hold it until she had read the last of the sheets. Quintard had reproduced the style and spirit of the age with remarkable fidelity—the unbridled passions, the coarse wit, the stirring deeds of valor. He made no attempt at delicate pathos or ideality. When a man suffered, he raged like a wounded boar; every phase of his nature was portrayed in the rough.

Hermia dropped the sheets into her lap and gazed into the fire. Her opinion of Quintard had quite changed. Why did she not love him? But she did not. He attracted her mentally, and his character fascinated her, but stone could not be colder than her heart. Did he go out of the room that moment never to return, she would not care, save that a promising friend would be lost. He had come too late. She no longer possessed the power to love. She shrugged her shoulders. They could be friends; that was quite enough.

Her comments were very flattering and discriminating, and he was much gratified, and gave her a general idea of the rest of the book. She had one or two books that might help him, and she promised to send them to his rooms.

“You are a remarkable mixture,” she said, in conclusion; “at times you seem almost prosaic, altogether matter-of-fact. When I first met you, I decided that you were commonplace.”

“You will allow a man to have two sides, at least,” said Quintard, smiling. “I cannot always be walking on the ramparts of imagination. I enjoy being prosaic at intervals, and there are times when I delight to take a hammer and smash my ideals to atoms. I like to build a castle and raze it with a platitude, to create a goddess and paint wrinkles on her cheek, to go up among the gods and guy them into common mortals, to kiss a woman and smother passion with a jest.”

“That is the brutality in your nature.”

“Yes,” said Quintard, “I suppose that is it.”

She watched him for a moment. He had taken a chair near her and was leaning forward looking at the fire, his elbow on his knee, his chin in the cup of his hand. His strong, clean-cut profile stood out like a bas-relief against the dark wood of the mantel. The squareness of his jaw and the thickness of his neck indicated the intense vitality of his organism; his thick, black mustache overshadowed a mouth heavy and determined; his dense, fine hair clung about a head of admirable lines; and his blue eyes were very dark and piercing. He had the long, clean-limbed, sinewy figure of a trained athlete, and there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on it. He combined the best of the old world’s beauty with the best of the new, and Hermia looked at him with a curious mixture of national and personal pride.

“I like brutality,” she said, abstractedly; “all the great men of the world had it.” She turned to him suddenly. “You look as if you always got whatever you made up your mind to have,” she said. “Do you?”

“Yes,” he said, “usually.”

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