ement a curve. Her look and voice harmonized with her
carriage; she pleased his artistic sense, and he lowered his lids a
little as he watched her, as one focuses a fine picture, or statue.

The aesthetic side of Thorne's nature was cultured to the extreme of
fastidiousness; ugly, repulsive, even disagreeable things repelled him
more than they do most men. He disliked intensely any thing that
grated, any thing that was discordant. If "taste is morality," Thorne
had claims to be considered as having attained an unusual development.
His taste ruled him in most things, unless, indeed, his passions were
aroused, or his will thwarted, in which case he could present
angularities of character in marked contrast to the smoothness of his
ordinary demeanor.

Women amused him, as a rule, more than they interested him. He
constantly sought among them that which, as yet, he had never
found--that which he was beginning to think he never should find,
originality combined with unselfishness.

Even in that brief interview, Pocahontas had touched a chord in his
nature no woman had ever touched before; it vibrated--very faintly, but
enough to arrest Thorne's attention, for an instant, and to cause him
to bend his ear and listen. In some subtle way, a difference was
established between her and all other women. Her ready acceptance of
his aid, her absolute lack of self-consciousness, even her calmly
courteous dismissal of him, piqued Thorne's curiosity and interest. He
reflected that in all probability he would meet her soon again, and the
idea pleased him.

As he selected a cigar, the grotesque side of the adventure touched
him; he smiled, and the smile broadened into a laugh as he recalled his
own part in the performance. What would Norma have said, could she
have beheld him heading off sheep from a squalling little African at
the command of an utterly strange young woman?

Pocahontas related her adventure gleefully when they were all assembled
at dinner; and the amusement it excited was great. Berkeley insisted
teasingly that her deliverer would develop into one of the workmen from
Washington, employed by General Smith in the renovation of Shirley.
One of the carpenters, or--as he looked gentlemanly and wore a coat, a
fresco man, abroad in search of an original idea for the dining-room
ceiling. This idea she had obligingly furnished him, and he would be
able to make a very effective ceiling of her, and Sawney, and the
she