Dangerously she had filed at
her emotions in the service of culture and she was now paying the
penalty for her ardent confidence. His ideas, vocal with golden
meanings, were never meant to be translated into the vernacular of life,
never to be transposed from higher to lower levels; this base betrayal
of his ideals she felt Keroulan had committed. Had he not said that love
should be like "un baiser sur un miroir"? Was he, after all, what the
princess had called him? And was he only a mock sun swimming in a
firmament of glories which he could have outshone?
A servant knocked and, not receiving a response, entered with a letter.
The superscription was strange. She opened and read:--
DEAR AND TENDER CHILD: I know you were angry with me when
we parted. I am awaiting here below your answer to come to you and
bare my heart. Say yes!
"Is the gentleman downstairs?" she asked. The servant bowed. The blood
in her head buzzing, she nodded, and the man disappeared. Standing there
in the bright summer light, Ermentrude Adams saw her face in the oval
glass, above the fireplace, saw its pallor, the strained expression of
the eyes, and like a drowning person she made a swift inventory of her
life, and, with the insane hope of one about to be swallowed up by the
waters, she grasped at a solitary straw.
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