XIX

Jimmie Forrester’s mismated eyes and crooked teeth from her mind. She failed. She was afraid⁠—terribly afraid. She knew it was folly, suicide, madness. But the vision persisted. For years she had in an indefinite way been lonely, had wanted the companionship of some man who would be to her the summation of the ideals she cherished as the most desirable. These spells had come infrequently, only with great rareness breaking through the vitreous shell with which her experiences had encased her. But they had been after all easy to shake off, for there had been no one man but instead an ideal of her own construction which had never taken form in the flesh. Now that she had met Jimmie Forrester, she vaguely realized that she was not as immune as she had fancied herself. She fell asleep, worried.