Froth and
mud!"
Ida gave a sudden stamp of rage and disgust, and whirled from the
room.
Van Berg happened to see her as she descended to the main hall-way,
and her face was so repulsive as to suggest to him the lines from
Shakespeare:
"In nature there's no blemish, but the mind;
None can be called deformed, but the unkind;
Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous--evil
Are empty trunks, o'er flourished by the devil."
That afternoon and evening her reckless levity and open coquetry
secured unfavorable comment not only from the artist, but from
others far more indifferent, whose attention she half compelled by
a manner that did not suggest spring violets.
Van Berg was disgusted. He was less versed in human nature than
art, and did not recognize in the forced and obtrusive gayety the
effort to stifle the voice of an aroused conscience. Even to her
blunted sense of right it seemed a hateful and disgraceful truth
that a stranger had helped her father towards manhood, an that she
had destroyed the transient and salutary influence. Her complacency
had been disturbed from the time her cousin had repeated Van Berg's
remark, "I could not speak civilly to a lady that I had just seen
giggling and flirting through one of Beethoven's finest symphonies;"
and now, through an unexpected chain of circumstances, she had,
for the first time in her life, reached a point of self-disgust and
self-loathing.
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