His eyes met hers
squarely, without evasion, but with a new quality, a searching,
perhaps, for something in her to give him courage. The girl had
character, more than ordinary decision. It was what Stewart
admired in her most, and the thing, of course, that the little
Marie had lacked. Moreover, Anita, barely twenty, was a woman,
not a young girl. Her knowledge of the world, not so deep as
Marie's, was more comprehensive. Where Marie would have been
merciful, Anita would be just, unless she cared for him. In that
case she might be less than just, or more.
Anita in daylight was a pretty young woman, rather incisive of
speech, very intelligent, having a wit without malice, charming
to look at, keenly alive. Anita in the dusk of the balcony,
waiting to hear she knew not what, was a judicial white goddess,
formidably still, frightfully potential. Stewart, who had
embraced many women, did not dare a finger on her arm.
He had decided on a way to tell the girl the story--a preamble
about his upbringing, which had been indifferent, his struggle to
get to Vienna, his loneliness there, all leading with inevitable
steps to Marie. From that, if she did not utterly shrink from
him, to his love for her.
It was his big hour, that hour on the balcony. He was reaching,
through love, heights of honesty he had never scaled before. But
as a matter of fact he reversed utterly his order of procedure.
The situation got him, this first evening absolutely alone with
her.
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