These girls, consciously animating their shapely
bodies with the allurement if not the ends of creation, prostitutes of
both temperament and fact, were, Lee Randon decided, calmer--yes,
safer--in mind and purpose than were his most admirable friends.
Certainly they were better defined, more logically placed than, for
example, Mrs. William Loyd Grove--her dress, her powdering and perfume,
the warm metal clasped about the softness of her arms, and the
indicated purpose about them, were not worlds apart. But the latter met
its announced intention; it was dissipated--normally--in satiety. But,
where Mrs. Grove was concerned ... Lee speculated. She was evidently
highly engaged, not a shade repelled, by what she saw; in a cool manner
she drew his gaze to a specially scarlet and effective dress:
"With her figure it's very successful," she commented.
What struck him immediately was that the proportions she had pointed
out and her own were identical; and Lee had a vision of Mrs. Grove in
the dress they were studying. The same thing, it appeared, was in her
mind. "Well," she challenged him, "I could, you know." This he admitted
discreetly, and asked her if she cared to dance.
"Why not?"
In his arms she was at once light and perceivable; everything a part of
her was exquisitely finished; he discovered more and more surely that
she was flesh and blood, and not, as he had regarded her, an insulated
social mechanism.
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