“Oh, but of course you must … you must let me introduce him. … Of course he won’t think anything of the kind. …” Mrs. Tarrant, slim and animated in her black dress, with lacy wings floating with the motions of her arms, moved away from the hearth, where she had been standing beside an exaggeratedly tall young woman whose little head drooped sideways from a long throat, and whose lids were cast down in deprecation on the rich glitter of her gold brocade.
“Oh, Halo, no … I don’t know … Won’t he think … ? I do want to be so utterly aloof and impartial. …”
“Well, but you will, my dear. You don’t suppose every young writer who’s introduced to you in the course of the winter will imagine you’re sampling him for the Pulsifer Prize?”
“How absurd, Halo! When of course it’s all in the hands of the committee. … But I do so want to preserve my complete serenity, my utter detachment. …” Mrs. Pulsifer flung the words after her in a series of staccato cries.
Halo laughed, and moved through the groups of guests scattered about her library to the corner where Vance Weston, his back to the company, stood in absorbed contemplation of the bookshelves. Until he had entered the room a few minutes earlier she had not seen him since he had come to borrow her Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and now, in the noise and sparkle of her first evening party for the New Hour, he had become once more an exterior, episodical figure, not the being whose soul had touched hers that other evening. She even reflected, as she approached him: “He’s shorter than I remembered; his shoulders are too heavy … he gets into fights about women. …” as if retouching an idealized portrait abruptly confronted with the reality.
“Vance,” she said, and he turned with a start of surprise, as though he had imagined himself alone. Halo smiled: “This isn’t the Willows, you know—I mean,” she hurried on, fearing he might misinterpret the allusion, “you’re at a party, and lots of the people here want to know you; first of all, Mrs. Pulsifer.”
“Mrs. Pulsifer—?” he echoed, his eyes coming back from a long way off and resting on his hostess in slow recognition.
“The prize-giver. Over there, in the gold-coloured dress. Come—poor Jet’s not alarming; she’s alarmed.”
“Alarmed?”
Halo slipped her arm through his. “Frightfully shy, really. Isn’t it funny? She’s in terror lest every author who’s introduced to her should ask for the prize—yet she wants them all introduced!”
“But isn’t the prize given by a committee?”
“Yes. Only she likes to look the candidates over. Come!”
It amused her to introduce Vance to people. It was the first time she had seen him in a worldly setting, and she was interested in watching the effect he produced—especially the effect on Mrs. Pulsifer. On the whole, giving parties for the New Hour might turn out to be great fun. She was only sorry that her young lion, in his evening clothes, looked unexpectedly heavy and common. …
Vance hung back. “What’s she like?” he asked, as if his decision depended on that.
“Like? I don’t know. …” Halo hesitated. “You see, she’s not an actual person: she’s a symptom. That’s what Frenny and I call the people who are everything in turn. They catch things from another kind that we call germ-carriers, people who get every new literary and artistic disease and hand it on. But come: she’s awfully nice, really.”
Vance still hesitated. “Do you think I’ll like her?” he asked oddly; and Halo laughed and wrinkled her shortsighted eyes. “Does one have to—at parties?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never been to a party before—like this.”
“Well, the important thing is that she should like you.”
“Why?”
She gave a slight shrug, and at that moment the golden lady swayed across the room and came up to them. “He hates the very idea, Halo—I knew he would!” she cried.
“Vance, this is Mrs. Pulsifer. Jet, be good to him—he’s my particular friend. Take her over to that quiet corner under the Buddha, Vance, and tell her how you write your stories.” She swept away to her other guests, and Vance found himself seated on a divan in a dim recess, with this long golden woman, half frightened and half forthcoming, and swaying toward him like a windswept branch. For a moment he had been annoyed at his hostess’s request. As soon as he had entered he had gone straight back to the shelves from which, a few weeks earlier, Halo had taken down Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Near them, he remembered noticing, were the Gogols, and there was one, “The Cloak,” which he heard the fellows at the Coconut Tree talking about (“All Tolstoy and Chekhov came out of ‘The Cloak,’ ” the advanced ones said. Well, he must read “The Cloak” then—) As soon as his eyes lit on that shelf he forgot where he was, and that there were other people about. He stood running his hands along the backs of the volumes in the happy agitation produced by the sight of unexplored bookshelves; and then Mrs. Tarrant came and spoilt it all. …
But now a new wave of sensation swept over him. The nearness of this strange Mrs. Pulsifer, her small feverish face, the careless splendour of her dress, the perfume it gave out, had caught his restless imagination. She interested and excited him as part of the unfamiliar setting which he had hardly noticed on his arrival because the books had thrust themselves between, but which now stole on him with the magic of low lights, half tints, easy greetings, allusive phrases, young women made for leisure and luxury, young men moving among them lightly and familiarly. The atmosphere was new to Vance—and this woman, neither young nor old, beautiful nor ugly, but curious, remote, like a picture or a statue come down from some storied palace wall, seemed
