She was dressed in some stuff that moved with her and was part of
her as wholly as if it and her body had been made together out of light
and gilded cloud--he had somehow never imagined that she could be
as--lustrous--as that--it gave him the sensation that he had only seen her
before when she was unlighted like an empty lantern, and that now there was
such fire of light in her that the very glass that contained it seemed
to be burning of itself. And then he realized that she had given him
good-evening with an exquisite politeness, shaken hands and now was
obviously waiting, with a little tired look of surprise around her mouth,
to find out exactly why he was there at all.
He gathered his wits--it wasn't fair, somehow, for her to be wearing that
air of delicate astonishment at an unexpected call at dinner-time when he
hadn't been invited--it forced him into being so casually polite.
"Sorry to break in on you like this, Mrs. Severance," he said with a
ghastly feeling that after all he might be entirely wrong, and another that
it was queer to have to be so formal, in the afternoon tea sense, with his
words when his whole mind was boiling with pictures of everything from Ted
as a modern Tannhauser in a New York Venusberg to triangular murder.
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