The Heart Line Author:Gelett Burgess Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II TUITION AND INTUITION It was a large room, unfurnished except for a couch in a recess of the wall and a table with two chairs drawn up under an ... more »electric-light bulb which hung from the ceiling. The walls were covered from floor to cornice by an arras of black velvet, falling in full, vertical folds, sequestering the apartment in soft gloom. Over the couch, this drapery was embroidered with the signs of the zodiac in a circle— all else was shadowy and mysterious. The young woman walked into the place with her leisurely stride—her chin a little up-tilted, her eyes curious. In the center of the room she stopped and looked slowly and deliberately about her. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly with amusement, evidently at the obvious picturesqueness of the studio. Granthope watched her keenly. With his eyes and ears full of Fancy Gray's ardent, dramatic youth, sparkling with the sophistication of the city, slangy, audacious, gay, this girl seemed almost unreal in her delicacy and exquisite virginity, a creature of dreams and faery, the personification of an ideal too fine and fragile for every-day. Her face showed caste in every line. He was a little afraid of her. Her bearing compelled not only respect, but, in a way, reverence— a tribute he seldom had felt inclined to pay to the mondaines who visited him. His confidence, however, soon asserted itself. He had found that all women were alike—there were, as in chess, several openings to his game, but, once started, the strategy was simple. "Well, how do you like my studio?" "It's like dreams I've had," she said. "I like it. It's so simple." "Most people think it too somber." "It is somber; but that purple-black is wonderful in the way it takes the light. And it's all so different!" "Yes, I fl...« less