it is a
temptation, it is not a temptation to you alone."

Choate was not looking at her, but he saw her, with the eyes of the
mind: the brown limpid look, the uplift of her quivering face, the curve
of her throat and the long ripple to her feet. He walked out of the
room; it was the only thing for a decent man to do, in the face of
incarnate appeal, challenge, a vitality so intense, and yet so
unconscious of itself, he knew, that it was, in its purity, almost
irresistible. In the street he was deaf to the call of a friend and
passed another without seeing him. They chaffed him about it afterward.
He was, they told him, thinking of a case.

Esther went about the house in an exhilarated lightness. She sang a
little, in a formless way. She could not manage a tune, but she had a
rhythmic style of humming that was not unpleasant to hear and gave her
occasional outlet. It was the animal in the desert droning and purring
to itself in excess of ease. She felt equal to meeting Aunt Patricia
even.

About dusk Aunt Patricia came in the mediaeval cab with Denny driving.
There was no luggage. Esther hoped a great deal from that. But it proved
there was too much to come by cab, and Denny brought it afterward,
shabby trunks of a sophisticated look, spattered with labels. Madame
Beattie alighted from the cab, a large woman in worn black velvet, with
a stale perfume about her. Esther was at the door to meet her, and even
in this outer air she could hardly help putting up her nose a little at
the exotic smell. Madame Beattie was swarthy and strong-featured with a
soft wrinkled skin unnatural from over-cherishing. She had bright,
humorously satirical eyes; and her mouth was large. Therefore you were
surprised at her slight lisp, a curious childishness which Esther had
always considered pure affectation. She had forgotten it in these later
years, but now the sound of it awakened all the distaste and curiosity
she had felt of old. She had always believed if Aunt Patricia spoke out,
the lisp would go. The voice underneath the lisp was a sad thing when
you remembered it had once been "golden ". It was raucous yet husky, a
gin voice, Jeffrey had called it, adding that she had a gin cough. All
this Esther remembered as she went forward prettily and submitted to
Aunt Patricia's perfumed kiss. The ostrich feathers in the worn velvet
travelling hat cascaded over them both, and bangles clinked in a thin
discord with curious trinkets hanging fr