He forgave him,
too.
As a matter of fact, he had never given the fashionable world
enough attention to hate it. He knew that Leo Klein derived a very
revivifying antagonism from reading about it, and often bought himself
an entrance to the opera partly because he loved music, but partly,
Ben always thought, because he liked to look up at the boxes and hate
the occupants for their jewels and inattention. But Ben watched the
spectacle with as much detachment as he would have watched a spring
dance among the Indians.
And then suddenly his detachment melted away, for a lovely girl came
through the window--lovely with that particular and specific kind of
loveliness which Ben thought of when he used the word--_his_ kind. He
used to wonder afterward how he had known it at that first glimpse,
for, in the dim light of the piazza, he could not see some of her
greatest beauties--the whiteness of her skin, white as milk where her
close, fine, brown hair began, or the blue of the eyes set at an angle
which might have seemed Oriental in eyes less enchanting turquoise in
color. But he could see her slenderness and grace. She was dressed in
clinging blues and greens and she wore a silver turban. She leaned her
hands on the railings--she turned them out along the railings; they
were slender and full of character--not soft. Ben looked at the one
nearest him. With hardly more than a turn of his head he could have
kissed it.
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