encountered it just for that sense of blessed relief.

Mrs. Edes had offered to take him home in her carriage, and he had
declined almost brusquely. To have exchanged that homeward walk over
the glistening earth, and under the clear rose and violet lights of
the winter sunset, with that sudden rapturous discovery of the
slender crescent of the new moon, for a ride with Mrs. Edes in her
closed carriage with her silvery voice in his ear instead of the keen
silence of the winter air, would have been torture. Von Rosen
wondered at himself for disliking Mrs. Edes in particular, whereas he
disliked most women in general. There was something about her feline
motions instinct with swiftness, and concealed claws, and the half
keen, half sleepy glances of her green-blue eyes, which irritated him
beyond measure, and he was ashamed of being irritated. It implied a
power over him, and yet it was certainly not a physical power. It was
subtle and pertained to spirit. He realised, as did many in
Fairbridge, a strange influence, defying reason and will, which this
small woman with her hidden swiftness had over nearly everybody with
whom she came in contact. It had nothing whatever to do with sex. She
would have produced it in the same degree, had she not been in the
least attractive. It was compelling, and at the same time irritating.

Von Rosen in his Morris chair after the tea welcomed the intrusion of
Jane Riggs, which dispelled his thought of Mrs. Wilbur Edes. Jane
stood beside the chair, a rigid straight length of woman with a white
apron starched like a board, covering two thirds of her, and waited
for interrogation.

"What is it, Jane?" asked Von Rosen.