The doves had flown away to the wings and been gathered up by the Indian servants. The actress on the stage began her Indian cradle song. She came, distinctly turning toward the box party. She had never sung like this in London before. There was a freshness in her voice, a quality in her gesture, a pathos and a sweetness that delighted her audience. They fairly clamored for her, waved and called and recalled. Dan stood motionless, his eyes fastened on her, his heart rocked by the song. He didn’t want any one to speak to him. He wished that none of them would breathe, and nearly as absorbed as was he, no one did speak. 47CHAPTER V—AT THE CARLTON 47 There are certain natures to whom each appearance of evil, each form of delinquency is a fresh surprise. They are born simple, in the sweet sense of the word, and they go down to old age never of the world, although in a sense worldly. If Dan Blair’s eyes were somewhat opened at twenty-two, he had yet the bloom on his soul. He was no fool, but his ideals stood up each on its pedestal and ready to appear one by one to him as the scenes of his life shifted and the different curtains rose. He had been trained in finance from his boyhood and he was a born financier. Money was his natural element; he could go far in it. But woman! He was one of those manly creatures—a knight—to whom each woman is a 48 sacred thing: a dove, a crystal-clear soul, made to cherish and to protect, made to be spoiled. And in Dan were all the qualities that go to make up the unselfish, tender, foolish, and often unhappy American husband. These were some of the other things he had inherited from his father. Blair, senior, had married his first love, and whereas his boy had been trained to know money and its value, how to keep it and spend it, to save it and to make it, he had been taught nothing at all about woman. He had never been taught to distrust women, never been warned against them; he had been taught nothing but his father’s memory of his mother, and the result was that he worshiped the sex and wondered at the mystery. 48 With Gordon Galorey and the others he had ridden, shot better than they, and had played, but with Lady Galorey and the Duchess of Breakwater he was nothing but a child. As far as his hostess was concerned, on several occasions she had put to him certain states 49 of affairs, well, touchingly. Dan had been moved by the stories of sore need among the tenants, had been impressed by the necessity of reforms and rebuildings and on each occasion had given his hostess a
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