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In all this man's music one catches sight of the long foreground, the long cycles of preparation. In every one of his works, from the most imposing to the least, from the "String Quartet" and "Pelléas" to the gracile, lissome little waltz, "Le plus que lent," there is manifest the Latin genius nurtured and molded and developed by the fertile, tranquil soil of France.
In the glow of the open doorway stood a young girl, gracile, tall, with singularly splendid eyes, brown eyes peeping at him from beneath a golden riot of loose hair.
Makely his hand and help her spring to the ground, which she did very lightly; her remarkable mind had kept her body in a sort of sympathetic activity, and at thirty-five she had the gracile ease and self-command of a girl.
Here is his career: a successful lawyer and leader in society; a member of the Legislature; a United States Senator, and then if he cares for it well, well, well! But in the meantime, there he sits, not with his feet in the window or on a chair he is a gentleman, I said, a Boston gentleman the flower of a gracile ancestry.
Springing up through that polychromatic flood myriads of pedicles slender and straight as spears, or soaring in spirals, or curving with undulations gracile as the white serpents of Tanit in ancient Carthaginian groves and all surmounted by a fantasy of spore cases in shapes of minaret and turret, domes and spires and cones, caps of Phrygia and bishops' mitres, shapes grotesque and unnameable shapes delicate and lovely!
And she, as she faced the self-possessed admiration in Arthur's eyes, was conscious of her finished beauty, even of the piquancy of the angle of her hat, and the smooth immaculate whiteness of her gloves; and she was proud, too, of Millicent's gracile, restless charm.
It was all Nancy, that letter, from the address, firm and straight as any promise she ever gave, but graceful as the curl of a vine-stem, gracile as her hands, with little unsuspected curlicues of humor and fancy making the stiff "t's" bend and twisting the tails of the "e's," to the little scrunched-up "Love, Nancy" at the end, as if she had squeezed it there to make it look unimportant, knowing perfectly that it was the one really important thing in the letter to him.
His hand paused amid the entries, and he grew suddenly aware of some dim, shadowy form, gracile and sweet-smelling as the spring-moist shadow of wandering cloud, emanation of earth, or woman herself? Dempsey pondered, and his absent-mindedness was noticed, and occasioned comment among the clerks. For the first time in his life he was glad when the office hours were over.
Gracile as a palm, and robed at once so simply, so exquisitely in white, she had seemed to him the supreme realization of all possible dreams of beauty ... And his passionate jealousy; and the slap from Laroussel; and the humiliating two-minute duel with rapiers in which he learned that he had found his master. The scar was deep.
Behind the obvious confusion, the hurt surprise of her countenance, an unexpected, dormant quality had been stirred into being. The crimson flood in her cheeks had stained more than her clear skin it had colored her gracile and candid girlhood so that it would never again be pellucid; into it had been spilled some of the indelible dye of woman.
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