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The July night first paled, then flushed into morning; the sun rose above the empty street and the light mists enwrapping the great city, before he threw himself on his bed, exhausted enough at last to fall into a restless sleep. The speculation of those quick-pulsed hours was in the end about equally divided between Marcella and the phrases and turns of his interview with Mr. Pearson.
He concentrated this memory upon a little bureau of purely personal receptacles and before long certain careless phrases of his wife stood in a neat row. She had mentioned upon one occasion that she thought she must have been about five when she arrived in Rouen, and remembered her first impression of the Cathedral as well as the boats on the Seine at night.
Had I not known him too well I should have thought him trying to be deep. I recalled his other phrases, that Mrs. Effie was seeing which way a cat would leap, and that the Klondike person would hand the ladies of the North Side set a lemon squash. I put them all down as childish prattle and said as much to the Mixer later in the day as she had a dish of tea at the Grill.
A man who says that he can't see, generally proves that he is blind, not that there is no light. If only for this reason, I would not quote phrases which would sound unduly crude or even arrogant when taken as absolute judgments, instead of being, as they often are, confessions of indifference in the form of condemnations. When a great writer really appeals to him, he shows no want of enthusiasm.
As one turns them over, phrases here and there catch the eye, arresting in thought and epigrammatic in form; such for instance as these: God is never behind time. If you play with temptation do not expect God will deliver you. A gracious woman has gracious friendships. No gift or genius or position can keep us safe or free from sin.
Her interpretation of the piece was good, but not eloquent. The spirit that she had heard certain musicians put into it was lacking. She remembered how differently even old Brantome, the expatriated French critic, had expressed these phrases. She wondered why, with her immense passion for music, she had never been able to translate its profoundest spirit.
Notwithstanding all the fine phrases exchanged between herself and the eloquent Maas, at the great ceremony of the 25th of October, she was, in reality, much detested in the provinces, and she repaid their aversion with abhorrence.
Recalling it as well as he could for it was one, the last, of more than a dozen notes he had written in two hours of that evening recalling phrases he was pretty sure he had put into the one he had finally sent, in despair of a better, it seemed to him he had given her a wholly false impression an impression of her superiority and of his fear and awe. That would never do.
He was the eldest of the officers of the traghetti, accustomed to respect, upheld by the united forces of the people; this man of the people and this mouthpiece of the nobles measured each other fearlessly as they looked into each other's faces each coolly choosing his phrases to carry so much as the other might count wise.
"One has heard all one's days," he said, "of people removing the mask; it's one of the stock phrases of romance. Well, there she stood with her mask in her hand. Her face," he went on gravely, after a pause "her face was horrible!" . . . "I give you ten minutes," she had said, pointing to the clock. "Make your scene, tear your hair, brandish your dagger!" And she had sat down and folded her arms.
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