PAULA ENCOUNTERS THE EYES OF HER FIRST GIANT, AND HEARKENS TO THE SECOND, THUNDERING AFAR-OFF Paula Linster was twenty-seven when two invading giants entered the country of her heart. On the same day, these hosts, each unconscious of the other, crossed opposite borders and toward the prepared between them.
 
Reifferscheid, though not one of the giants, found Paula a in brown, when she entered his office before nine in the morning, during the fall of 1901. He edited the rather weekly book-page of The States, and had come to rely upon her for a paper or two in each issue. There had been rain in the night. The October sunlight was strange with that same charm of which adds a glow of attraction to motherhood. The wonderful autumn , which broods over our zone as the spirit of grains and fruits, just perceptibly shaded the vivid sky. A sentence Paula had heard somewhere in a play, "My God, how the sun does shine!" appealed to her as particularly fitting for New York on such a morning. Then in the streets, so lately flooded, the brilliant new-washed air was sweet to breathe.
 
Paula had felt the advisability the year before of adding somewhat to her income. brought out the truth that not one of her talents had been to the point of selling its product. She had the rare sense to distinguish, however, between a certain to write and a marked ability for producing literature; and to recognize her own sound and sharp of what was good in the stirring tide of books. Presenting herself to Reifferscheid, principally on account of an especial for the book-page of The States, she never forgot how the big man looked at her that first time over his spectacles, as if turning her pages with a sort of psychometric . He found her possible and several months won her not a little distinction in the work.
 
Reifferscheid was a fat, pondrous, heavy-spectacled of work. He compelled her real admiration—"the American St. Beuve," she called him, because he was so tireless, and because he genius from afar. There was something unreservedly charming to her, in his sense of personal victory, upon discovering greatness in an unexpected source. Then he was so big, so common to look at; kind as only a bear of a man can be; so wise, so deep, and with such a big smoky factory of a brain, full of fascinating crypts. Subcutaneous laughter that rested her internally for weeks lingered about certain of the large man's sayings. Even in the of her account, she felt his kindness.
 
"Now here are some essays by Quentin Charter—a big man, a young man and a slow worker," he said. "Charter's first volume was a thunderer. We greeted it with a two years ago. Did you see it?"
 
"No," Paula replied. "I was too strong for literary trifles then."
 
"Anyway, look out for Charter. He didn't start to appear until he was an adult. He's been everywhere, read everything and has a punch like a . An effective chap, this Charter. He dropped in to see me a few weeks after my review. He confessed the critics had made him very glad.... 'I am doing a second book,' he to me. 'Down on my knees to it. Work-shop stripped of encomiums; no more dinner-parties or any of that fatness. Say, it's a queer thing about making a book. You never can tell whether it's to be a boy or a girl....'"
 
Paula smiled reservedly.
 
"I asked him what his second book was to be about," Reifferscheid went on. "'Women,' said he. 'How novel!' said I. He grinned . 'Reifferscheid,' he declared, in his snappy way, 'women are interesting. They're doing the thinking nowadays. They're getting there. One of these mornings, man will wake up to the fact that he's got to be born again to get in a class with his wife. Man is mixed up with altogether too much of this down-town madness. Women don't want votes, public office, or first-hand dollars. They want men!' ... I always remembered that little bit of stuff from Charter. He says the time will come when classy girls will get their heads together and evolve this , which will be handed intact to adorers: 'No, boys, we can't marry you. We haven't any illusions about . It isn't nice nor attractive, but it's better than being with hucksters and peddlers who come up-town at night—mental cripples in empty . Go away and learn what life means, what it means to be men—what it means to us for you to be men! Learn how to live—and oh, boys, hurry back!'"
 
"Splendid!" Paula exclaimed.
 
"Oh, yes, Charter is a full deck and a joker. He's lived. He makes you feel him. His years are veritable campaigns. He has in the vortices of human action and human passion—and seemed to come out whole!..." Reifferscheid at a memory. "'Women are interesting,' Charter finished in his dry fashion. 'I just got to them lately. I wish I could know them all.'"
 
"I love the book already," Paula said. Reifferscheid laughed inwardly at the feminine way she held the volume in both hands, pressing it close.
 
"It's the only book on my table this morning that I'd like to read," he added. "Therefore I give it to you. There's no fun in giving something you don't want.... Are you going to hear Bellingham to-night?"
 
She was conscious of an unaccountable dislike at the name, a sense of inward chill. It was almost as reckonable as the pleasure she felt in the work and personality of Quentin Charter.
 
"Who's Bellingham?" Paula swallowed dryly after the first of the name.
 
"Mental magician. I only mentioned him, because you so seldom miss the unusual, and are so quick to hail a new or odd mental ."
 
"Magician—surely?" she asked.
 
"He comes rather recommended as such," Reifferscheid replied, "though personally mine is more than a healthy skepticism. There's a notice this morning of his lectures. He recently hypnotized a man to whom the medical profession was afraid to administer an anaesthetic—held him painless during a long and serious operation. Then Bellingham is the last word in alchemy, feminine emotions, causes of hysteria, , the proportions of male and female in each person; also he renews the vital principle, advises unions, makes you beautiful, and has esoteric women's classes. A Godey's Ladies' man. Some husband will shoot him presently."
 
Paula took the surface car home, because the day was so rare and the crowd was still downward . The morning paper contained an announcement of Quentin Charter's new book, and a of the author. A strange, talented figure, new in letters, the article said. The paragraphs had that fresh glow of a publisher's high hope. Here was the book of a man who had lived; who drew not only upon art, history, and philosophy for his prisms of thought, but who had roamed and worked and ridden with men, keeping a sensitive finger ever at the pulse of nature; a man who had never in the most degree lowered the import or artificially raised the tension of his work to adjust it to the fancied needs of the public. In spite of the enthusiastic phrasing, everything about Charter fascinated her; even the make-up of the unread book in her hand, and the sentences that gleamed from the quickly turned pages.
 
She had ridden many squares, when the name of Dr. Bellingham stood out before her eyes in the newspaper. The chill in her was perceptible as before, when Reifferscheid the name. It was as the latter had said—the famous healer and telepathist was to start a series of classes for women.
 
Paula lived alone in a small apartment at the Zoroaster, "Top-side o' Park." Few friends, many books, within a car ride of the world's best fruition in plays, lectures, music, and painting—yet the reality of it all was the expansion of her mind in the days and nights alone. The subtle relations of things encroached upon her intelligence with a steady and certain trend. She never had to pass, like so many of cruder nature, through the trials of ; nor to be painfully in mind from between manhandled and the pure of the Lord Christ. Hers was not an aggressive masculine , but the of it—that inspiring, completing feminine intelligence, to a man's hard-won concepts and ready with a crown for them.
 
Something of this type of woman, the big-brained brothers of men have written and , painted, sung and dreamed of, since human thought first lifted above the appetites. There must be a bright answer for each man's particular station of evolution in the world's dumfounding of the sexes—one woman to lighten his and accelerate his passage to the Uplands. For we are but half-men, man and woman alike. The whole is two, whose union forms One.... This is the key to Nature's arcanum; this, the one articulate sentence from all the restless murmuring out of the past; this, the stupendous Purpose weaving the million thrilling and activities of the present hour—the clean desire for completion—the union of two which forms One.
 
The search for this completing woman is the secret of man's roving in the gardens of sense. His frequent falls into depravity are but results incidental to the occultations of his Guide Star. From in the smoke of , to the lifted of manhood on a rising road, Man has come; and by the interminable torture of the paths which sink behind, he has the other half of to reach the Top.
 
From a child whose fairies were only into books for day-time convenience, darkness to Paula meant visions, indeed. Often now at night, though she never spoke of it, the little apartment was peopled by the spirits of her reading and her ideals—mystics, priests, prophets, teachers, . To the congenial dark they came—faces unlike any she had ever seen, but quite unmistakable in her dreamings. Once when she a natural aversion to meat for several months, soft foot-falls and low voices (which had nothing whatever to do with her neighbors across the hall, or the elevator-man in any passage) began to rouse her in the night. New York is no place for such of sense, and she checked these through physical exercise and increased diet. She was seldom afraid, but there was a tension in all her imaginings, and she grew marvellously in this twenty-eighth year—furnishing her mind more than she knew. Reifferscheid saw this in her eyes and in her work.
 
Throughout the swiftly passing day, Paula realized that she would go to Prismatic Hall in West Sixty-seventh Street, where Dr. Bellingham was to organize his lecture-course that night. Against this foreknowledge was a well-defined distaste for the man and his work. Between the two, the thought of the evening crowded frequently into mind until she became impatient with herself at the importance it assumed. It was with a certain feminine manipulation of conscience, so as almost to be unconscious, that she excused her own curiosity on the ground that her disfavor for the doctor and his message would be strengthened by the first meeting, beyond the need of further experience.
 
One she made to her natural aversion—that of going late. She was in a mood critical. The real Paula Linster, she fancied, was at home, "Top-side o' Park"; here was just a sophisticated professional surface, such as reporters carry about. The Hall was packed with women; the young and the ; faces of pup-innocence; faces bitten from terrible expeditions to the poles of sense; faces tired and thick from the tread of an orient of emotions; slow-roving eyes which said, "I —I crave! I have lost the sense of reality, but seven sick and pampered organs crave within me!"
 
The thought came to Paula—to be questioned afterward—that man's evil, after all, is rudimentary compared to a worldly woman's; man's soul not so complicated, nor so irrevocably identified with his sensual organism. She could not avoid pondering upon woman's love for far ventures into sensation, permitting these ventures to be called (if the world would) searches for the holy grail. The attraction for women which specialists of the body possess, actually startled her. Bellingham was one of these. On the surface of all his sayings, and all comment about him, was the , deadly insinuation that the soul expands in the pursuit of bodily health. About his name was the mystery of his age, whispers of his physical perfection, intimations of romantic affairs, the suggestion of his performances upon the emotions—the whole of activities designed to make him the instant aversion of any normal member of his own sex. Yet the flock of females had settled about him, as they have settled about every black human plague—and glorious messiah—since the birth of days.
 
The thrilled, expectant look on several faces brought to Paula's mind the type of her sisters who being shocked; whose exaltations are patently those of emotional contact; who call physical excitement the of their spirit, and cannot be persuaded to confess otherwise. Woman as a for man to play upon never her before with such direct and certain pressure. Here were women intent upon encountering a new sensation; women who breathed the name of Motherhood next to Godhood, and yet endured their with organic rebellion and mental ; women who could not conceive of love apart from the embrace of man, and who imagine a "message" in and salacious novels, making such books popular; women of gold-leaf culture whose fastens with a bow—narrow temples of infinite receptivity....
 
Why had they come? In the perfect feminine system of information, the whisper had run: "Bellingham is wonderful. Bellingham tells you how to live forever. Bellingham teaches the of self and has esoteric classes—for the few!" They had the sanction of one another. There was no scandal in being there openly, nor any instinct, , to warn them that secret classes to discover how to live forever, had upon the surface no very flavor. The digest of the whole matter was that revelations sooner or later would be made to a certain few, and that these revelations, which would be as fine oil upon the mental surfaces of many women near her, would act as acid upon the male mind generally.
 
In the sickening distaste for herself and for those who had to make no concession to themselves for coming, inasmuch as society permitted; and who would be heartfully disappointed in a lecture on that did not discuss the more intimate matters of the senses, Paula did not the opposite sex at any higher value. She merely reviewed matters which had come to her as some of the crowning of her own kind. The centre of the whole affair, Dr. Bellingham, was now introduced.
 
He looked like a Dane at first glance. His was the size, the dusty look and the big bone of a Dane; the deep, downy paleness of cheek, the tumbled, though not mussy hair. He was heavy without being , lean, but big-boned; his face was lined with years, though young in the of skin. The lips of a rather small and feminine mouth were fresh and red as a girl's. In the softness of and the faintest possible undertone of color, it was impossible not to think of perfected circulation and human health brought to truest rhythm. The cannot make such a skin. It is organic harmony. decoration does not the seeing eye any more than a powder-magazine becomes an innocent cottage because its walls are vine-clad.... Directly behind her, Paula now heard a slow whisper:
 
"I knew him twenty-five years ago, and he is not a moment older to look at."
 
She seemed to have heard the voice before, and though the sentence surged with a dark significance through her mind, she did not turn. Bellingham's words were now the intelligence of his audience. To Paula, his soft mouth was indescribably with cultured passion, red with , fresh with that satisfaction which brings to mind a second figure, fallen, drained. His presence set to quivering within her, fears from the great occult past. Strange deviltries would always be shadowed about the Bellingham image in her mind.... Here was a man who made a of his body, invested it with a heavy hungering God, and taught others—women—to bow and to serve.
 
To her the body was but a nunnery which enclosed for a time an eternal element. This was basic, incontrovertible to her understanding. All that the body and helped to make fleshly desires last long, was hostile to the eternal element. Not that the body should be abused or neglected, but kept as nearly as possible a clean for the spirit, brought to a fine automatic functioning. It was as clear to Paula Linster as the faces of the women about her, that the splendid sacrifice of Jesus was not that He had died upon the Cross, but that He put on flesh in the beginning for the good of infant-souled men.... To eat sparingly of that which is good; to sleep when weary; to require cleanliness and pure air—these were the physical laws which worked out easily for decent minds. Beyond such simple affairs, she did not allow the body often to rule her brain. When, indeed, the potentialities of her sex stirred within, Paula felt that it was the down-pull of the old brood-mother, Earth, and not the lifting of wings.
 
Bellingham's voice correlated itself, not with the eyes and brow, but with the Lilith mouth—that strangely unpunished mouth. It was soft, . There was in it the warmth of breath. The high white forehead and the tousled brown hair, leonine in its masculinity—seemed foreign as another man's. She hearkened to the voice of a doctor used to women; one who knows women without illusion, whom you could imagine saying, "Why bless you, women never say 'no.'"
 
The eyes were blue-gray, but toned very darkly. The looked small in contrast to the expanse of clear white. They were like a bird's in expression, of warming or , yet one did not miss the impression that they could brighten and harden, even to shining in the dark. Heavy blonde brows added a look of severity.
 
Paula's spirit, as if recognizing an old and mortal enemy, gathered about itself every human protecting emotion. hateful, she surveyed the man, listening. He talked marvellously; even in her , she had to grant that. The great sunning cat was in his tones, but the words were joined into clean-thought expression, rapid, vivid, unanswerable. He did not speak long; the first meeting was largely formative. Paula knew he was studying his company, and watched him peer into the faces of the women. His mouth occasionally in the most and engaging way, while his words ran on with the refined wisdom of ages. And always to her, his eyes stood out cold, hard, deadly.
 
Finally, she was conscious that they were roving near her; moving left to right, from face to face, as a collection-plate might have been passed. Her first thought was to leave; but fear never failed to arouse an impulse to face out the cause. The second thought was to keep her eyes lowered. This she tried. His words came clearly now, as she stared down into the shadow—the carved thoughts, bright and swift like a company of soldiers moving in accord. As seconds passed, this down-staring became insufferable as though some one were holding her head. She could not breathe under . Always it had been so; the maddened the very centres of her reason—a locked room, a hand or a will stronger than her own.
 
Raising her head with a , as one coming to the surface from a great depth of water, she met Bellingham's glance unerringly as a of light. He had waited for this instant. The eyes now boring into her own, seemed lifted apart from all material things, veritable essences of light, as if they caught and held the full rays of every arc-lamp in the Hall. Warmth and smiling were not in them; instead, the spirit of conquest aroused; preying-power, dead to pity and humor. Here was Desire toothed, , quick with every subtle art of nature. Something at war with God, his eyes expressed to her. Failing to master God, failing to foul the centres of creative purity, this Something the souls of women. Continually his voice sought to drug her brain. The fine edge was gone from her perceptions; dulled, she was, to all but his sayings. There was a chill behind and above her eyes; it swept backward and seemed to in the coarser ganglia at the base of her brain. Once she had seen a bird and flutter lower and lower among the branches of a lilacbush. On the ground below was a cat with head twisted upward—its vivid and implacable eyes . Paula could understand now the crippling the bird felt.... Finally she could hear only the words of Bellingham, and feel only his power. What he was saying now to her was truth, the unqualified truth of more-than-man.
 
When his eyes turned away, she felt ill, , immersed in an indescribable inner darkness. Her fingers pained cruelly, and she realized she had been clutching with all her strength the book in her hand—Quentin Charter's book—which she had begun since morning. She could not remember a single one of his sentences which had impressed her, for her brain was tired and ineffectual, as after a prolonged fever, but she held fast to the effect of an optimistic philosophy. Then finally out of the helplessness of one pitifully stricken, a of her old returned. She used it at once, rose from her seat to leave the Hall. Into the base of her brain again, as she neared the door, the protest of his eyes. Had she been unable to go on, she would have screamed. She felt the eyes of the women, too; the whole, a ghastly experience. Once outside, she wanted to run.
 
Not the least astonishing was the quick of it all. This was because her sensations were the result of an influence foreign to her own nature. In a few moments she felt quite well and normal again, and was conscious of a tendency to make light of the whole . She reached home shortly after ten, angered at herself—inexplicable perversity—because she had taken Bellingham and the women so seriously.... That night she finished one of the big books of her life—Quentin Charter's "A Damsel Came to Peter." When the dawn stole into the little flat, her eyes were stinging, and her temples felt stretched apart from the recent hours.