He had an engagement that afternoon to walk with Beatrice Whitford. She was almost the only girl in her set who knew how to walk and had the energy for it. In her movement there was the fluent, untamed grace that expressed a soul not yet stunted by the claims of convention. The golden little head was carried buoyantly. In her step was the rhythm of perfect ease. The supple resilience of her was another expression of the spiritual quality that spoke in the vivid face.
Clay, watching her as she moved, thought of a paragraph from Mark Twain's "Eve's Diary":
She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is color mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky; the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadow on the mountains, the golden islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the waste of space. . . .
But the thing that tantalized him about her and filled him with despair was that, though one moment she might be the first woman in the birthday of the world filled with the primitive emotions of the explorer, the next she was a cool, Paris-gowned-and-shod young modern, about as competent to meet emergencies as anything yet devised by heaven and a battling race.
They crossed to Morningside Park and moved through it to the northern end where the remains of Fort Laight, built to protect the approach to the city during the War of 1812, can still be seen and traced.
Beatrice had read the story of the earthworks. In the midst of the telling of it she stopped to turn upon him with swift accusation, "You're not listening."
"Have you heard something about your cigarette girl?"
Clay was amazed at the accuracy of her center shot.
She read. The golden head nodded triumphantly. "I told you she could look out for herself. You see when she had lost you she knew enough to advertise."
Was there or was there not a faint note of malice in the girl's voice? Clay did not know. But it would have neither surprised nor displeased him. He had long since discovered that his imperious little friend was far from an angel.