But when she began to speak, you listened with the ears of
your immortal soul stretched wide. Women worshiped her, though Mr.
Jelnik's eyes danced, and Westmacote's military mustache bristled a
bit, and she all but drove Doctor Richard Geddes, who had notions of
his own, out of his senses.
"Stop trying to argue with me, my dear man," she'd say in her rich
voice, "but come and let us reason together. I haven't heard one
word of reason from you yet!" And she'd let loose one of her
rollicking laughs that set the doctor's teeth on edge and made The
Author shudder. The Author snarled to me that she laughed like a
rolling-mill and reasoned like a head-on collision. He put her in
his new book, clothes and all. Just as Luis Morenas, with an edged
smile on his thin lips, made rapid-fire sketches of her. _He_ called
her "The Future-Maker."
Now, shouldn't Alicia and I have been happy? And yet we weren't.
Alicia's laugh wasn't so frequent. I would catch her watching me,
with an odd, troubled, anxious speculation in her eyes. She had a
habit of blushing suddenly, and as quickly paling. And quietly, but
none the less surely and definitely, she had begun to avoid Doctor
Richard Geddes.
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