THE ORDEAL OF IDA PENDRAGON
701,], ANDK
I
THE RED HOUR
THERE was myrrh in the honey of the smile with which
Edgar Rolles turned from the faeade of the Pantheon.
“Aux
grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante"—he reflected that
the grateful fatherland never gives her great men anything but
a tomb.
Then the full blast of it struck him.
The Gargantuan
jest!
The solemn ass that had devised the motto;
the
laborious ass that had put it up there; the admiring asses
that had warmed their skinny souls at the false fire of its
pompous sentimentality.
Perhaps he was the first to see the joke!
He rocked and
reeled with laughter—to find himself caught, as he stumbled
against a table; in the sturdy arms of a solidly built young
woman, who—he had in her a glance—joined
in Celtic
harmony the robust brutality of the peasant to the decadent
refinement of the latter Greek.
The face of a Bacchanal, even
of a satyr, perhaps; but a satyr of Raphael; the face of a
madonna, perhaps; but a madonna of Rodin.
Besides this,
115