"Do you suppose that women will ever mean more to men than pegs
on which to hang their sentiments? Alice and her kind will always be
convenient substitutes for a man's admiration of himself."
"Which he calls love, you think?"
"Which he probably calls by the most romantic name that occurs to him.
Have you seen Patty?"
Before he could reply, she turned away to speak to some one who was
approaching on her other side; and a minute later, with a joyous smile
at Stephen, she floated off in the dance. Was she really as happy as she
looked, or was it only a gallant pretence, nothing more?
He had not found Patty yet; and while he stood there, with his eyes
eagerly searching the revolving throng for her face, he had a singular
visitation, a poignant sense that some rare and beautiful event was
eluding him in its flight, a feeling that the wings of the moment had
brushed him like feathers as it sped by into experience. Once or twice
in his life before he had received this impression; first in his boyhood
when he rose one morning at sunrise to go hunting, and again in France
after he had come out of the trenches.
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