Medora Hastings, breathlessly resuming her seat, while Mr. Augustus
Frothingham, in indescribably gorgeous apparel elaborately bent to
receive--and a member of the High Council bent to hand--two
glittering articles which St. George was certain were side-combs.
There the lady sat, tilting her head to keep her tortoise-shell
glasses on her nose, perpetually curving their chain over her ear, a
gesture by which the side-combs were perpetually displaced. If the
island people had been painted purple, St. George felt sure that she
would have acted quite the same. Personality meant nothing to
her--not, as with them, because it had been merged in something
greater, but because, with her, it was overborne by self. And there
sat Mr. Frothingham (who did not attend the play during court
because he believed that a man of affairs should not unduly
stimulate the imagination), his head thrown back so that his long
hair rested on his amazing collar, his hands laid trimly along his
knees. In that crystal air, instinct with its delicate, dominant
implication of things imponderable, the personality of each
persisted undisturbed, in a kind of adamantine unconsciousness.
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