omplex, cerebral,
free from any trace of sentimentality, quiveringly responsive to the
appealing voices of the arts, healthily responsive to the joys of
athleticism almost in the way of a Greek youth in the early days of the
world, but that she was free from all taint of animalism. Men had told
her that, in spite of her charm and the fascination they felt in her,
she lacked one thing--what they chose to call temperament. That was
why, they said, she was able to live as she did, audaciously, even
eccentrically, without being kicked out of society as "impossible." She
was saved from disaster by her interior coldness. She lived by the brain
rather than by the senses. And she had taken this verdict to herself as
praise. She had felt refinement in her freedom from ordinary desire. She
had been proud of worshipping beauty without any coarse longing. To
her her bronzes had typified something that she valued in herself. Her
immense vanity had not been blended with those passions which shake many
women, which had devastated Lady Sellingworth. A coarseness in her mind
made her love to be physically desired by men, but no coarseness of
body made her desire them. And she had supposed that she represented the
ultra modern type of woman, the woman who without being cold--she would
not acknowledge that she was cold--was free from the slavish instinct
which makes all the ordinary women sisters in the vulgar bosom of
nature.

But since she had seen Arabian she felt less highly civilized; she knew
that in her, too, lurked the horrible primitive. And that troubled and
at the same time fascinated her.

Was that why when she had seen Arabian for the first time she had
resolved to get to know him? She had called him a living bronze, but
she had thought of him from the first, perhaps, with ardour as flesh and
blood.

And yet at moments he repelled her. She, who was so audacious, did not
want to show herself with him at the Ritz, to walk down Piccadilly with
him in daylight. As she had said to Dick Garstin, an atmosphere seemed
to hang about Arabian--an unsafe atmosphere. She did not know where she
was in it. She lost her bearings, could not see her way, heard steps and
voices that sounded strange. And the end of it all was--"I don't know."
When she thought of Arabian always that sentence was in her mind--"I
don't know."

She was strangely excited. And now Craven came to her. And he attracted
her, too, but in such a different way!

Sudd