There was Washington--then Lincoln--then
a copy of Leonardo's Jesus in the Last Supper fresco--and a
fourth face, bearded, powerful, imperious, yet wonderfully kind
and good humored-- a face she did not know. Pointing her riding
stick at it she said:
``And who is that?''
With a quick but not in the least a startled movement the girl at
the table straightened her form, turned in her chair, saying, as
she did so, without having seen the pointing stick:
``That is Marx--Karl Marx.''
Jane was so astonished by the face she was now seeing--the face
of the girl--that she did not hear the reply. The girl's hair
and skin had reminded her of what Martha had told her about the
Jewish, or half-Jewish, origin of Selma Gordon. Thus, she
assumed that she would see a frankly Jewish face. Instead, the
face looking at her from beneath the wealth of thick black hair,
carelessly parted near the centre, was Russian--was
Cossack--strange and primeval, intense, dark, as superbly alive
as one of those exuberant tropical flowers that seem to cry out
the mad joy of life. Only, those flowers suggest the evanescent,
the flame burning so fiercely that it must soon burn out, while
this Russian girl declared that life was eternal. You could not
think of her as sick, as old, as anything but young and vigorous
and vivid, as full of energy as a healthy baby that kicks its
dresses into rags and wears out the strength of its strapping
nurse.
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