He was making her known for something besides gold,
gamblers, and Sierra pines.
But above all he was instructing and expanding a feminine but really
fine mind. She sat at his feet and there was no doubt in that mind,
both naive and gifted, that his was the most remarkable intellect in
the world and that from no book ever written could she learn as much.
He would have been more than mortal had he renounced his pedestal and
he was far too humane for the cruelty of depriving her of the
stimulating happiness he had brought into her lonely life. There was
no one, man or woman, to take his place.
Nor was there any one to criticize. The world was out of town. They
lived in the same hotel, and he rarely met any one in their common
corridor. At first she mentioned his visits casually to her husband,
and Howard grunted approvingly. Several times he took Masters snipe
shooting in the marshes near Ravenswood, but he accepted his friend's
attitude to his wife too much as a matter of course even to mention
it. To him, a far better judge of men than of women, Langdon Masters
was ambition epitomized, and if he wondered why such a man wasted
time in any woman's salon, he concluded it was because, like men of
any calling but his own (who saw far too much of women and their
infernal ailments) he enjoyed a chat now and then with as charming a
woman of the world as Madeleine.
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