Through the foliage between her and the last of the stretches of highroad winding up from Remsen City she spied a man climbing in her direction--a long, slim figure in cap, Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers.Instantly--and long before he saw her--there was a grotesque whisking out of sight of the serious personality upon which we have been intruding.In its stead there stood ready to receive the young man a woman of the type that possesses physical charm and knows how to use it--and does not scruple to use it.
For a woman to conquer man by physical charm is far and away the easiest, the most fleeting and the emptiest of victories.But for woman thus to conquer without herself yielding anything whatsoever, even so little as an alluring glance of the eye--that is quite another matter.It was this sort of conquest that Jane Hastings delighted in--and sought to gain with any man who came within range.If the men had known what she was about, they would have denounced her conduct as contemptible and herself as immoral, even brazen.But in their innocence they accused only their sophisticated and superbly masculine selves and regarded her as the soul of innocence.This was the more absurd in them because she obviously excelled in the feminine art of inviting display of charm.To glance at her was to realize at once the beauty of her figure, the exceeding grace of her long back and waist.A keen observer would have seen the mockery lurking in her light-brown eyes, and about the corners of her full red lips.
She arranged her thick dark hair to make a secret, half- revealed charm of her fascinating pink ears and to reveal in dazzling unexpectedness the soft, round whiteness of the nape of her neck.
Because you are thus let into Miss Hastings' naughty secret, so well veiled behind an air of earnest and almost cold dignity, you must not do her the injustice of thinking her unusually artful.
Such artfulness is common enough; it secures husbands by the thousand and by the tens of thousands.No, only in the skill of artfulness was Miss Hastings unusual.