and squinted through it.
Yonder, in a pool of sunlight, stood his new neighbour, wholly unclad,
doing exercises of some sort before a long gilt mirror. Hedger did not
happen to think how unpardonable it was of him to watch her. Nudity was
not improper to any one who had worked so much from the figure, and he
continued to look, simply because he had never seen a woman’s body so
beautiful as this one,—positively glorious in action. As she swung her
arms and changed from one pivot of motion to another, muscular energy
seemed to flow through her from her toes to her finger-tips. The soft
flush of exercise and the gold of afternoon sun played over her flesh
together, enveloped her in a luminous mist which, as she turned and
twisted, made now an arm, now a shoulder, now a thigh, dissolve in pure
light and instantly recover its outline with the next gesture. Hedger’s
fingers curved as if he were holding a crayon; mentally he was doing the
whole figure in a single running line, and the charcoal seemed to explode
in his hand at the point where the energy of each gesture was discharged
into the whirling disc of light, from a foot or shoulder, from the
up-thrust chin or the lifted breasts.
He could not have told whether he watched her for six minutes or sixteen.
When her gymnastics were over, she paused to catch up a lock of hair that
had come down, and examined with solicitude a little reddish mole that
grew under her left arm-pit. Then, with her hand on her hip, she walked
unconcernedly across the room and disappeared through the door into her
bedchamber.
Disappeared—Don Hedger was crouching on his knees, staring at the golden
shower which poured in through the west windows, at the lake of gold
sleeping on the faded Turkish carpet. The spot was enchanted; a vision
out of Alexandria, out of the remote pagan past, had bathed itself there
in Helianthine fire.
When he crawled out of his closet, he stood blinking at the grey sheet
stuffed with laundry, not knowing what had happened to him. He felt a
little sick as he contemplated the bundle. Everything here was different;
he hated the disorder of the place, the grey prison light, his old shoes
and himself and all his slovenly habits. The black calico curtains that
ran on wires over his big window were white with dust. There were three
greasy frying pans in the sink, and the sink itself—He felt desperate.
He couldn’t stand this another minute. He took up an armful of winter
clothes and ran down four flights into the basement.
“Mrs. Foley,” he began, “I want my room cleaned this afternoon,
thoroughly cleaned. Can you get a woman for me right away?”
“Is it company you’re having?” the fat, dirty janitress enquired. Mrs.
Foley was the widow of a useful Tammany man, and she owned real estate in
Flatbush. She was huge and soft as a feather bed. Her face and arms were
permanently coated with dust, grained like wood where the sweat had
trickled.
“Yes, company. That’s it.”
“Well, this is a queer time of the day to be asking for a cleaning woman.
It’s likely I can get you old Lizzie, if she’s not drunk. I’ll send Willy
round to see.”
Willy, the son of fourteen, roused from the stupor and stain of his fifth
