Goldsmith had been picking out for the
sextette, this feeling of baffled curiosity and of irritation over the
etiquette that forbade his satisfying it, would have summed up,
adequately enough, all the emotions he was conscious of toward the girl.
His professional admiration for her was another thing of course--a
perfectly legitimate thing. But with her appearance from behind the
screen, in that French evening gown--a gown she wore with the
indescribable air of belonging in it--with all her vibrant, irregular,
fascinating, eupeptic beauty fully revealed, his mood of impatient
acquiescence had fallen away. The basis of his feeling toward her
shifted in a manner that James Randolph wouldn't have had a moment's
difficulty in explaining, although Galbraith didn't understand it
himself.
The thing he was conscious of was, when she made that offer to copy this
gown herself for twenty dollars and so leave him leeway for the purchase
of the Empire frock for Olga--offering to go to that trouble not for
herself or her friend, but to further the accomplishment of what he
wanted; namely, the success of his production--what he was conscious of
then, was an overpowering desire to make a confidante of her; to talk
matters out with her, show her some of the major strategy of the game
that he had to consider, and find out how the thing would look to her.
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