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Updated: May 8, 2025
Who could this strange girl be? this Natalie Coolidge? And what could she possible desire of him? These questions remained unanswered, yet continually tantalized. He could not even grasp her personality. In spite of her apparent friendliness, her irresistible smile, her lack of conventionality, there remained a certain reserve about the young woman he felt quite unable to penetrate.
Tones of deeper colour flush the pure white light of her dawn, and announce the fuller day of womanhood. And with the death of the dawn the buttercup passes insensibly away. The next season steals her from us; it is only the holidays that give her to us, and dispel half our conventionality, our shams, our conceit with the laugh of the buttercup.
They give utterance to a few polite phrases, charitably accounting for the deed by the easy attribution of insanity to the king, and the curtain falls. It may well be imagined that "The King" made a stir in literary and social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the dovecotes of conventionality and conservatism.
So soon as he grasped the tenor of her views, he perceived that he himself had thought as much from his earliest years. "Of course," he remarked, in a flash of sexual pride, "a man is freer than a woman. End in the Colonies, y'know, there isn't half the Conventionality you find in society in this country."
But my company, though not avoided, was not greatly sought for. I think that something of my curious history was known, and that I was, not unkindly but instinctively, avoided, as an animal of a different species, not allied to the herd. The conventionality of little boys is constant; the colour of their traditions is uniform. At the same time, although I made no friends, I found no enemies.
On the other hand, the man who is interested in the workings of civilisation under totally new conditions; who can make allowances, and quickly and easily readjust his mental attitude; who has learned to let the new comforts of a new country make up, temporarily at least, for the loss of the old; who finds nothing alien to him that is human, and has a genuine love for mankind; who can appreciate the growth of general comfort at the expense of caste; who delights in promising experiments in politics, sociology, and education; who is not thrown off his balance by the shifting of the centre of gravity of honour and distinction; who, in a word, is not congealed by conventionality, but is ready to accept novelties on their merits, he, unless I am very grievously mistaken, will find compensations in the United States that will go far to make up for Swiss Alp and Italian lake, for Gothic cathedral and Palladian palace, for historic charters and time-honoured tombs, for paintings by Raphael and statues by Phidias.
She held out her hand to me, and did not try to draw it away, though I grasped it rather longer and more tightly than conventionality might have approved. "You will come soon to see Lady Tressidy and me?" she asked, softly. "I thought of calling to-morrow afternoon. May I?" "I shall be glad very glad. Never shall I forget your kindness to me to-day. Don't think me any more odd than you can help.
Haydon, who never loved a portrait-painter much, yet says of Lawrence, that he was 'amiable, kind, generous, and forgiving. Further on he adds: 'He had smiled so often and so long, that at last his smile had the appearance of being set in enamel. But then, Mr. Haydon prided himself on his coarseness, defiance, and hatred of conventionality, deeming these fitting attributes of the high artist.
It was for the first time to-day, that he had held her hand just for a moment longer than mere conventionality allowed. The first kiss on her finger-tips had sent the blood rushing wildly to his heart; but he still worshipped her, and gazed upon her as upon a divinity. She sat bolt upright in the chair, abandoning her small, cold hands to his burning grasp.
'Your brother and I both think it is not right, nor what Lord and Lady Martindale would approve, that you should join this party without some one they know and like. You mistake, Violet. This is not like a ball. There is no absurd conventionality, tacking a spinster to a married woman. 'No, but since. Arthur cannot be with you, it is needful to take measures to prevent any awkwardness for you.
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