James Branch Cabell

“ And, in time, you will love me a little, simply because I want you to—isn't that always a woman's main reason for caring for a man?" She considered this dubious and flushed. "I won't insist," said Townsend, with a hurried, contented little laugh, "that you were formerly an Argive queen, if you don't like. That was a paraphrase of my verses, I confess—but—but Helen has always been to me the symbol of perfect loveliness, and it was not unnatural that I should identify you with her." ”

“ There were pictures—outline pictures—of phenomenally straight-nosed warriors, with flat draperies which demonstrated that the laws of gravity were not yet discovered; pictures of slender goddesses, who had done their hair up carefully and gone no further in their dressing; all sorts of pictures—and Helen's was the most manifestly impossible of them all. But I knew—I knew of her beauty, that wonderful beauty which made men's hearts as water and drew the bearded kings to Ilium to die for her, having put away all memories of distant homes and wives ”

“ I do smell smoke!"
Wrapping his dressing-gown about him—he had afterward reason to thank the kindly fates that it was the green one with the white fleurs-de-lis, and not the wonted unspeakably disreputable bathrobe, scorched in various and unexpected places by the pipe-ashes of many years—Townsend went to the door and peered out into the empty hotel corridor. The incandescent lights glimmered mildly through a gray haze that was acrid and choking to breathe; little puffs of smoke crept lazily out of the lift-shaft just opposite; down-stairs all Breslau was shouting, "Feuer!" ”

“ When men talk to her as they cannot but talk to her, her face will flush dull red, like smouldering wood; and she will smile a little, and look out over a great fire such as that she saw on the night when Ilium was sacked and the slain bodies were soft under her feet as she fled through flaming Troy Town. ”

“ Townsend glanced toward her grace of Drummington, who, as a dining dowager of many years' experience, was engrossed in the contents of her plate. "She's as hard of hearing as a telephone-girl; and your neighbor—his neighbor is Lady Allonby. We might as well be on a desert island, desire o' the world." ”

“ As a matter of fact, nothing could be more simple. They were on the top floor of the hotel, and beside them, in the niche corresponding to the stairs below, was an iron ladder that led to a neatly whitewashed trap-door in the roof. Adopting her suggestion, Townsend pushed against this and found that it yielded readily; then, standing at the top of the ladder, he looked about him on a dim expanse of tiles and chimneys; yet farther off were the peaked roofs and gables of Breslau ”

“ III "And so," said Townsend, in his soul, as the men redistributed themselves, "she's married—married while you were pottering with big moose and battles and such trifles—oh, you ass! And to a man named Barry-Smith—Manchester and cotton goods, most likely—and—and Jimmy Travis is telling a funny story—laugh, you ass! No, I won't laugh—it's disgusting. Why isn't he at home—with a wife and carpet slippers—instead of here, grinning like a fool over some blatant indecency? He ought to marry; every young man ought to marry. ”

“ But there were, so far as they could find, no trap-doors in the roof of the Councillor von Hellwig, or in the neighboring roofs; and,, after searching three of them carefully, Townsend, apologetic but not ill-pleased, suggested the propriety of waiting till dawn to be rescued.
"You see," he pointed out, "everybody's at the fire over yonder. But we're quite safe, I should say, with the whole block of houses to walk on; and we have cheerful company, eligible central location in the heart of the city, and the superb spectacle of a big fire at exactly the proper distance. ”

“ Is it nonsense that for five years I have remembered a woman whose soft body I held—for a moment—in my arms? nonsense that I have fought all this time against—against the temptations every man has—that I might ask her at last—some day when she would come, as I knew she would—to share a fairly clean life? ”

“ Townsend flushed guiltily. "The V. C.," he admitted.
She flashed a broadside at him. "Oh! Then you——?"
"Dear me, yes!" said Townsend—to the ear-trumpet; "domesticity came in with ping-pong. Divorces are going out, you know, and divorcées aren't allowed to. Quite modish women are seen in public with their husbands nowadays."
"Heavens!" lamented her grace of Drummington. "What a disagreeable fad!"
Townsend ate his portion of duck abstractedly. ”

“ The Duchess of Drummington bore down upon them, a determined and generously proportioned figure in black silk.
"Really," said she, aggressively, "I never saw two people more engrossed. My dear Mrs. Barry-Smith, you've been so taken up with Bob Townsend, I haven't had a chance to ask after your dear husband, or get in a word. It's scandalous! Why isn't he here?"
"Dear Lady Drummington—" said she.
"In fact," broke in Townsend, smiling, "Mrs. Barry-Smith and I have been discussing very—very interesting subjects." His manner was perfection ”