Stephanie

“ She was fascinated, could not even look up at her beloved mountains.
“Tiens!” whispered Stephanie. “This tall stranger, very distinguished, who regards us, Moriole!”
Honor shook her shoulders a little impatiently. Stephanie was always seeing distinguished strangers; they seldom, if ever, were distinguished in Honor’s eyes.
Suppose, she thought, an Arm should suddenly appear, rising from the bosom of the lake,
“Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful!” ”

“ Stephanie, managing to keep him in view among the dancers, saw the little Goddess of Night, with her impudent up-tilted nose, floating amid her scandalously diaphanous draperies in his arms through a dreamy tango, farther and farther away from her.
Things went wrong with her, too; she dropped her emerald girdle and several of the paste stones rolled away; the silk of her body-vest ripped, revealing the snowy skin, and she had to knot her gold sari higher. Then the jewelled thong of her left sandal snapped and she lost it for a moment.
"The devil!" ”

“ Merle, Addie, and Ulyth smiled. This visit, paid four years ago, was the standing triumph of Stephanie's life. She never forgot, nor allowed any of her schoolfellows to forget, that she had been entertained by the great people of the neighbourhood.
"He wasn't Lord Glyncraig then; he was only Sir John Mitchell, Baronet. He's been raised to a peerage since," said Merle, willing to qualify some of the glory of Stephanie's reminiscences.
"We don't grow peers in Waitoto, or baronets either, for the matter of that," observed Rona. "I don't guess they're wanted out with us. ”

“ What are you making a bother about?" cried Rona, as an excited detachment of girls stopped her game of tennis and asked her a dozen questions at once. "What have I done with Stephanie's pendant? Why, I've done nothing with it, of course."
"But you must have hidden it somewhere."
"It's a mean trick to play on her."
"You and Steph are always at daggers drawn."
"Do go and put it back."
"I can't think what you're talking about!" flared Rona. "I've not even been inside the studio. If a joke's being played on Stephanie, it's somebody else who's doing it, not me. ”

“ But Stephanie cared little for those confidential and intimate relations so popular among school girls of her age.
She made no enemies, however. An engaging reticence and reserve characterized her—the shy and wistful charm of that indeterminate age when a girl is midway in the delicate process of transformation.
If she cared nothing about girls, she lacked self-confidence with boys, though vastly preferring their society; but she got little of it except when Jim's school friends came to the house during holidays. ”

“ It is true that he seldom or never saw Stephanie alone now, but that seemed accidental, because he really had been absorbed in his work and she was usually out somewhere or other during the day. But she appeared to be cordial to him—just as full of gay malice and light banter as ever—full of undisguised interest in the progress of his work and delighted with his promise to let her read the manuscript when it was typed and before he submitted it to any publisher. ”

“ But I'll never care, my darling, if I'm to be with you."
"Oh, Stephanie, I love you so."
A child rubbed her cheek against his.
"And you wouldn't say so," she said. "I tried so hard to make you, because I was sure you did. None of the others ever say anything else, but the one I wanted to say it would not speak. And so I had to. I couldn't go on, my darling; so I had to propose to you. But I don't think it matters, really. I mean, no one need know." ”

“ Stephanie, looking very slim and young in her deep mourning, went back to college unreconciled and in tears. Jim drove her to the station. They stood together in the Pullman vestibule for a few minutes before the train departed, and she clung to him, both black-gloved hands holding tightly to his shoulders.
"Everything familiar in life seems to be ending," she said tremulously. "I'm not very old yet, and I didn't really wish to begin living seriously so soon—no matter what nonsense I talked about self-expression. ”

“ We are the spoils of the chase, dear. His conventions were made to contain us in a sort of game-preserve before capture; cage us after we are made prisoner. His laws fetter us; a misstep ruins us; irregularities never impair him. That is the ancient view; that, still, is the secret view of man; that is his inborn conviction regarding us and himself.... And, very slowly, we are beginning his education."
"I didn't know you felt that way," said Stephanie.
"I do.... But if I were in love"—she laughed gaily—"I'd be inclined to take my chances with this monster I have painted for you." ”

“ Stephanie had brought a copy back to school, and it now adorned her bedroom mantelpiece. She was never tired of descanting upon the pageant, and telling about all the aristocratic people who had come to see it. According to her account the very flower of the neighbourhood had been present, and had taken special notice of her. A girl who had so lately consorted with the county could not be expected to tolerate a tyro from the backwoods. Stephanie was too well brought up to allow herself to be often openly rude ”

“ Presently Stephanie’s luck began to take another turn for the better; for as soon as she was well out of reach on the Island, Stephanie’s mother began to repent that she had let her go so easily. Others might covet the now precious possession. She began to suspect a conspiracy to keep Stephanie permanently exiled. There had been conditions set upon her return. For the first time Mrs. Rogazrovitch began to consider seriously the instructions she had received about hygiene and sanitation. ”

“ And for a while the offensive phrase stuck in Jim's memory, though always chivalrously repudiated as applying to Stephanie. Yet, the poor girl certainly bored him at times, so blind her devotion, so pitiful her desire to please, so eager her heart of a child for the comradeship denied her in the dreadful years of solitude and fear.
For a year or two the affair lay that way between these two; the school-boy's interest in the little girl was the interest of polite responsibility; consideration for misfortune, toleration for her sex, with added allowance for her extreme youth. ”

“ A captive, is he not captivated? How then?”
“Catastrophe of a language!” murmured Stephanie, who detested English.
“Hop, Froggy!” said Patricia and Maria in one breath.
44 Seeing battle imminent, Honor broke in hastily, “Oh, look, girls! Regarde, Stephanie! The châlet! Race to it!”
No more words were spoken. Panting, breathless, the girls pressed on. Soon they overtook Gretli and Soeur Séraphine, and some would have passed them, but Patricia made an imperious gesture.
“Manners?” she suggested; “one doesn’t rush ahead of one’s hostess, I think; or does one, Stephanie?” ”

“ Art does not go far when it stops short at the revelation of the felicitous powers of the artist; and it is not altogether right when it tends to beguile sympathy with an unworthy object and perplex a spectator's perceptions as to good and evil. Genevieve Ward's performance of Stephanie, brilliant [Pg 318] though it was, did not redeem the character from its bleak exile from human sympathy. The actress managed, by a scheme of treatment exclusively her own, to make Stephanie, for two or three moments, piteous and forlorn ”

“ She flew down again with white face and burning eyes.
"Girls!" she cried shakily. "Girls! Somebody's taken my pendant! It's gone!"
"Why, nonsense, Stephie; it can't be gone! It was there all right last night."
"It's not there now. Ulyth's has been put in its place, and mine's vanished. Come and see."
There was an instant stampede for the studio.
"It's probably on the bench," said Doris. "Some people are such bad lookers. I expect we shall find it directly." [Pg 222]
"You can't find a thing that isn't there," retorted Stephanie with warmth. ”

“ She is far too weak to stand any sudden shock, and I will merely tell her now that news has come that a little girl whose description corresponds with that of Stephanie has been found and is on her way here, and may arrive very shortly. ”

“ And since then she has refused to accept a penny from him and has supported herself by her profession, and, sometimes, by posing for artists.
"And that is the real story of Harry Belter and Marie Cliff. So you can believe as much as you choose of his views on matrimony."
After a flushed and painful silence, Stephanie said:
"Do you believe this to be true?"
"If one woman can judge and understand another, what I have told you is true, Steve. Long ago I won the child's confidence. ”

“ Then that intellectual, capable, intelligent and superbly healthy girl flopped down on her knees by Stephanie's day-bed and, laying her lovely head on the pillow, began to whimper.
"I—I don't know what's the matter with me," she stammered, "but my mind is full of that wretched man every minute of the day and half of the night. He is absolutely shameless; he makes love to me t-tyranically. It's impossible for a girl to keep her reserve—her d-dignity with a m-man who takes her into his arms and k-kisses her whenever he chooses——"
"What!" ”

“ Seeing that the girl looked white and tearful, she ordered her promptly to bed.
"It may be nothing, but any rate you will be better lying down," she decreed. "Go downstairs, girls, all of you. Nobody is to come into the studio again to-night."
"Rona had my pendant in her hand all the time," grumbled Stephanie to Beth as she obeyed the mistress's orders. "She dropped it as she fell. I've put it back safely, though, and I don't mean to let anybody interfere with it. I shall complain to Miss Bowes if it's touched again." ”

“ Maman said I should, but I know not!”
Stephanie thought the freckles quite as dreadful as Honor did, and looked her sympathy.
“Tiens!” she said. “We have the appearance that the good God gives us.”
Here she glanced at her own reflection, with complacent approval of her brown velvet eyes and black satin hair.
“My poor Honor! But your hair is always beautiful, and there are no eyelashes like yours in Vevay. Take courage! In the story your hair is dark, is it not? The story marches always? ”

“ A school-mate who dresses well, talks continually of highborn friends, and "gives herself airs" can nearly always command a certain following among the more unthinking of her comrades, and such girls as Beth Broadway, Alice and Merle Denham, and Mary Acton were easily impressed by Stephanie's attitude of superiority, and ready to follow her lead on a question of caste. ”

“ That was all the explanation offered or asked.
"Will you come to tea at five?"
"I should like to."
"I'd love to have you. And if it doesn't bore you, would you tell me something about your very beautiful profession? You see, stage dancing fascinates me, and I'm taking lessons and I've an inclination to become a professional."
"I'd love to talk about it with you!" said Marie Cliff impulsively. "I'll tell you everything I know about it.... And I do know a little, because I have been on the stage since I was a child."
"You're one now," said Stephanie, laughing, "—an adorable one!" ”

“ She poured his tea and offered him a sugar biscuit, which he declined.
"You see," she continued, curling up into the depths of her rickety velvet arm-chair and taking her cup and a heap of sugar biscuits into her lap, "Oswald Grismer has been Steve's shadow—at her heels always—and I know well enough that Stephanie was not insensible to the curious fascination of the man. You know how devotion impresses a girl—and he is clever and good looking. ”

“ I am going to California to interview the men and then I shall charter a vessel and hunt for the other boat or prosecute whatever search is necessary."
"That's fine," said Stephanie. Then she turned to her father, stretching out her hand. "Father--"
The old man understood perfectly well what she wanted.
"I can amplify that plan a little," he said. "I have been wanting to get away from active business for a long time and my affairs are fortunately in such a shape that I can trust them to others. I should have trusted them to you, Harnash, if you weren't obliged to go along." ”

“ She was also desirous of learning whether Miss Ogden had been included in the cast, an inclusion against which she had determined politely to protest. She had resolved to make life miserable for the offending freshman to the point of driving her from Hamilton College, provided she could accomplish such a revenge. If she could not, it would not be from lack of trying. A pampered only child, Stephanie had grown to young womanhood with a fixed idea of her own importance. ”

“ Her figure, which has obviously never known the restraints of--of--civilization is absolutely perfect. Her hair is like spun gold, and there's enough of it to cover half her beautiful little body."
"What you say is very interesting," observed Harnash, indifferently, "but it doesn't particularly concern me. The only type of woman that appeals to me is your type."
He emphasized this statement in truly appropriate, if somewhat conventional, fashion, and Stephanie received statement and emphasis alike with obvious satisfaction. ”

“ This, together with a certain mystical touch of the animal freedom, whether in joy or wrath, that goes with a being having neither soul nor conscience, the actress had to supply—and did supply—by her art. As interpreted by Genevieve Ward the character was reared, not upon a basis of unchastity but upon a basis of intellectual perversion. Stephanie has followed—at first with self-contempt, afterward with sullen indifference, finally with the bold and brilliant hardihood of reckless defiance—a life of crime. She is audacious, unscrupulous, [Pg 317] cruel; a consummate tactician ”