Produced by Michelle Shephard Charles Franksand the Online Distributed Proofreading TeamCYTHEREAJOSEPH HERGESHEIMER_For _ DOROTHY_Charming in the present andSecure with the past _IIt was probably Lee Randon realized the last time he would play golfthat year He concluded this standing on a shorn hill about which thecountry was spread in sere diminishing tones to the grey horizonBelow a stream held a cold glimmer in a meadow of brown frostkilledgrass and the wind the bitter flaws where Lee stood was thinlyscattered with soft crystals of snow He was alone no one would playwith him so late in the season and there had been no boy present tocarry his clubs Yes this was the last time hed try it until springPeyton Morris who had married Lees niece and was at least fourteenyears his junior had been justified in a refusal which at itsexpression had made Lee crossAt worse than fortyfive he had told Morris curtly he was more activethan the young men hardly out of the universities To this Peyton hadreplied that undoubtedly Lee had more energy than he personally hefelt as old asas Egypt Ridiculous Lee decided trying to make uphis mind whether he might continue playing or return beaten byNovember to the clubhouse In the end with numb fingers he picked uphis ball and walked slowly back over the empty course The wind nowwas behind him and increasingly comfortable he grew reflectiveThe comparison of Peyton Morriss age with his recalling the fact tobe precise of his fortyseven years created a vague questioningdissatisfaction Suddenly he saw himselfa comfortable body in acomfortable existence a happy existence he added sharplyobjectively and the stout figure in knickerbockers rough stockings ayellow buckskin jacket and checked cap pulled over a face which hefelt was brightly red surprised and a little annoyed him In theabrupt appearance of this image it seemed that there had been notransitional years between his slender youth and the present He had anabsurd momentary impression that an act of malicious magic had in asecond transformed him into a shape decidedly too heavy for grace Hisbreathing where the ground turned upward was even slightly laboredIt was Lee thought with all the intensity of an original discoverydevilish unpleasant to grow old to die progressively on ones feet heelaborated the fact That was what happened to a manhis liverthickened his teeth went his veins became brittle pipes of limeWorse than all that his potency the spirit and heat of living metwithout any renewal its inescapable winter This might did occurwhile his being was rebellious with vain hope Today in spite of theslight clogging of his breath his bodys loss of flexibility hisimagination was as vigorous as curious as ever  take that nonsenseabout the doll which in a recalled classical allusion he hadprivately named Cytherea Peyton Morris would never have entered intothatLee Randon on one of his infrequent trips to New York had seen it ina confectioners window on Fifth Avenue and instantly it hadcaptivated his attention brought him to a halt The doll beautifullydressed in the belled skirt of the eighteenforties wore plumcoloredsilk with a bodice and wide short sleeves of pale yellow and crossedon the breast a strip of black Spanish lace that fell to the hem ofthe skirt It wasnt of course the clothes that attracted himheonly grew conscious of them perhaps a month laterbut the wilfulcharm the enigmatic fascination of the still face The eyes were longand half closed under finely arched brows there was a minute patch atthe right corner of a pale scarlet smiling mouth a pointed chinmarked an elusive oval beneath black hair drawn down upon a long slimneck hair to which was pinned an odd headdress of old gilt with atthe back pendent ornamental strands of goldglass beadsInsistently conventional selectly ordinary in appearance the stickwith a pigskin handle hanging from his left arm he had studied thedoll with a deepening interest Never in life he told himself had heseen a woman with such a magnetic and disturbing charm Fixed in intentregard he became conscious that strangely rather than small thefigure seemed diminished by a distance which yet left every featureclear With this he grew satirical at himself and moving resolutelydown the Avenue treated his absorption with ridicule But the visionof the face the smile the narrowed eyes persisted in his mind thetruth was that they troubled him and within three blocks he hadturned The second view intensified rather than lessened his feelingand he walked quickly into the shop odorous with burned sugar The dollwas removed from the windowit had come from Paris he learnedandafter a single covert glance he bought it for he needlessly informedthe girl wrapping it in an unwieldy light package his daughterTo his secret satisfaction Helena who was twelve hadnt beenstrongly prepossessed and the dollthough Lee Randon no longerthought of it as merely thatleft downstairs had been finally placedon the white overmantel of the fireplace by the diningroom doorThere when he was alone he very often stopped to gaze at the figureand during such a moment of speculative abstraction he had from thememories of early reading called her Cytherea That Lee rememberedvaguely was the Cytheranian name of the mysterious goddess of loveVenus of the principle the passion of life stirring in plants andmen But in the shape above him it had been strangely modified from anapparently original purpose made infinitely difficult if notimpossible of understanding His Cytherea bore the traces the resultsof old and lost and polished civilizations there was about her even abreath of immemorial China It mingled with a suggestion of Venice theeighteenth century Venice of the princes of Naxoshow curiously shebrought back tags of discarded readingand of the rococo Viennesecourt This much he grasped but the secret of her fascination ofwhat at heart she represented what in her had happened to loveentirely escaped himLee was interested in this he reassured his normal intelligencebecause really it bore upon him upon the whole of his married lifewith Fanny He wasnt merely the victim of a vagrant obsession thetyranny of a threatening fixed idea No the