William Loyd Grove at Malmaison--that, of all the places possible,
presented itself at once--would furnish him with an uncommon evening.
Consequently, driving smoothly over Fifth Avenue, a strange black river
of solidified asphalt strung with fixed moons, in answer to her query,
he proposed Malmaison, and the directions were transmitted into the
ivory mouth-piece beside her. At the moment when the day was most
threatened it had shown a new and most promising development. Over the
grey dress Mrs. Grove wore a cloak with a subdued gold shimmer, her hat
was hardly more than the spread wing of a bird across the pallor of her
face, and the deep folds of the gloves on her wrists emphasized the
slender charm of her arms. No young--younger woman, he decided, could
compete with her in the worldly, the sophisticated, attractiveness she
commanded: on the plane of absolute civilization she was supreme. In
the semi-gloom of the closed car, sunken in her voluminous wrap of dull
gold, with a high-bridged nose visible, a hand in its dead-white
covering pressed into the cushion, she satisfied his every aesthetic
requirement. Women, he reflected, should be primarily a show on a stage
carefully set for the purpose of their loveliness. Not many men, and
scarcely more women--so few were lovely--would agree with him there.
Argument would confront him with the moral and natural beauty of
maternity; very well, in such instincts, he thought with a resignation
quite cheerful, he was lacking.
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