in a pool where there were a lot of poplar trees. Now, this is the way to forget your grief.”
“She is not blonde,” Gordon said harshly, holding the empty bottle in his hand. “She is dark, darker than fire. She is more terrible and beautiful than fire.” He ceased and stared at them. Then he raised the bottle and hurled it crashing into the huge littered fireplace.
“Not—?” murmured Fairchild, trying to focus his eyes.
“Marble, purity,” Gordon said in his harsh, intolerant voice. “Pure because they have yet to discover some way to make it unpure. They would if they could, God damn them!” He stared at them for a moment from beneath his caverned bronze brows. His eyes were pale as two bits of steel. “Forget grief,” he repeated harshly. “Only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?”
He took the thin coat from behind the door and put it on over his naked torso, and they helped Fairchild from the room and down the dark stairs, abruptly subdued and quiet.
8
Mark Frost stood on the corner, frankly exasperated. The street light sprayed his tall ghostly figure with shadows of bitten late August leaves, and he stood in indecision, musing fretfully. His evening was spoiled: too late to instigate anything on his own hook or to join any one else’s party, too soon to go home. Mark Frost depended utterly upon other people to get his time passed.
He was annoyed principally with Mrs. Maurier. Annoyed and unpleasantly shocked and puzzled. At her strange. . . not coldness: rather, detachment, aloofness . . . callousness. If you were at all artistic, if you had any taint of art in your blood, dining with her filled the evening. But now, to-
