was smoothly rounded, provocative; its graceful proportion
deceived the casual eye.

With a disdainful motion she kicked off a heavily
clumsy slipper -- her instep arched narrowly to a
delicate ankle, the small heel was sharply cut. "In
silk," she said, "and a little brocaded slipper, you
would see." She replaced the inadequate thing of
leather. The animation died from her countenance,
she surveyed him with cold eyes, narrowed
lips. Her gaze, he felt, included him in the immediate,
hateful scene; she gained fresh repugnance
from his stained, collarless shirt, his bagging knees
coated with sawdust.

She rose, and, her skirt gathered in one hand, descended
the precarious flight of steps. She crossed
the grass slowly, her head bent, her hands tightly
clenched.

Later, in the yard, Gordon saw, at a lighted,
upper window, the silhouette of her back, a gleam
of white arm. The window cast an elongated rectangle
of warm light on the blue gloom of the grass.
It illuminated him, with his gaze lifted; and, while,
standing in the open window, she saw him clearly,
she was as indifferent, as contemptuous of his presence,
as though he had been an animal. A film
of cambric, golden in the lamplight, settled about
her smooth shoulders, fell in long diaphanous lines.
She raised her arms to her head, her hair slid darkly

[[136]]

p135 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p136w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p137

v?