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THE IMMORTAL MOMENT




Books by

MAY SINCLAIR

  The Helpmate
  The Divine Fire
  Two Sides of a Question
  Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson
  Etc., etc.




[Illustration: "Kitty's face... pleaded with the other face in the
glass."]




THE IMMORTAL MOMENT

The Story of Kitty Tailleur

_By_

MAY SINCLAIR

ILLUSTRATED AND DECORATED BY

C. COLES PHILLIPS.

  NEW YORK
  DOUBLEDAY PAGE & CO.
  1908




COPYRIGHT, 1908 BY

MAY SINCLAIR

PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1908

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
  INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING
  THE SCANDINAVIAN




PUBLISHERS' NOTE

  THIS STORY APPEARS IN ENGLAND
  UNDER THE TITLE "KITTY TAILLEUR"




ILLUSTRATIONS


  "Kitty's face... pleaded with the other face
  in the glass"                                      FRONTISPIECE

  "She stood there, strangely still... before the
  pitiless stare that went up to her appealing face"           10

  "'You won't be tied to me a minute longer than
  you like'"                                                  208

  "'I want to make you loathe me... never see me
  again'"                                                     268




[Illustration: THE IMMORTAL MOMENT]




THE IMMORTAL MOMENT

CHAPTER I


They came into the hotel dining-room like young persons making their
first entry into life. They carried themselves with an air of subdued
audacity, of innocent inquiry. When the great doors opened to them they
stood still on the threshold, charmed, expectant. There was the magic of
quest, of pure, unspoiled adventure in their very efforts to catch the
head-waiter's eye. It was as if they called from its fantastic
dwelling-place the attendant spirit of delight.

You could never have guessed how old they were. He, at thirty-five, had
preserved, by some miracle, his alert and slender adolescence. In his
brown, clean-shaven face, keen with pleasure, you saw the clear,
serious eyes and the adorable smile of seventeen. She, at thirty, had
kept the wide eyes and tender mouth of childhood. Her face had a child's
immortal, spiritual appeal.

They were charming with each other. You might have taken them for bride
and bridegroom, his absorption in her was so unimpaired. But their names
in the visitors' book stood as Mr. Robert Lucy and Miss Jane Lucy. They
were brother and sister. You gathered it from something absurdly alike
in their faces, something profound and racial and enduring.

For they combined it all, the youth, the abandonment, the innocence,
with an indomitable distinction.

They made their way with easy, unembarrassed movements, and seated
themselves at a table by an open window. They bent their brows together
over the menu. The head-waiter (who had flown at last to their high
summons) made them his peculiar care, and they turned to him with the
helplessness of children. He told them what things they would like,
what things (he seemed to say) would be good for them. And when he went
away with their order they looked at each other and laughed, softly and
instantaneously.

They had done the right thing. They both said it at the same moment,
smiling triumphantly into each other's face. Southbourne was exquisite
in young June, at the dawn of its season. And the Cliff Hotel promised
what they wanted, a gay seclusion, a refined publicity.

If you were grossly rich, you went to the big Hotel Metropole, opposite.
If you were a person of fastidious tastes and an attenuated income, you
felt the superior