So she put out her hand with that stiffness that holds at arm's length
and said: "Oh, how dy' do, Mr. Norris," just as though they had never sailed
together in dual solitude, and she allowed her lip to curl in evidence
of her disapproval of the much warmer greeting of her elders.
She sat down and eyed and tapped a small bronze slipper, while she
ignored the reproachful glances of her mother at her rank desertion of
conversational duties. Her father hardly noticed it. He himself so liked
young men that he frequently forgot that his daughter and not himself
might be the object of their quest. So he plunged cheerfully into an
animated discussion of the new tide in civic politics, while Norris
dully and conscientiously tried to bear up his end.
Ellery's eyes, however, as well as the thoughts behind those superficial
thoughts that guided his words, were absorbed in the other side of the
room, where Miss Elton canvassed with her mother the merits of various
embroidery silks. She was lovelier than ever. He had thought her perfect
before, but to-night she had added a sheen to perfection and made herself
entrancing, both reposeful and vivid. He wondered if she had heard of
Dick's engagement and if her color covered a pale heart.
Suddenly she flung up her head impatiently, and came behind her father's
chair to clap a small hand over his mouth in the middle of a sentence of
which Norris had entirely lost track.
"Father, father," she cried, "do you think Mr. Norris wants to come here
and maunder over stupid politics all the evening, after he has been
writing stupid editorials about them all day? They are stupid--I've
read some of them." She smiled at the young man. "Wouldn't you both
infinitely rather hear me sing?"
Mr. Elton kissed the offending hand before he put it gently down.
"I know I should."
Norris sprang up.
"May I turn your music?" he asked eagerly, but she shook her head as she
moved away.
"There isn't going to be any music to turn."
She began to sing the same little Roumanian song that he remembered on
their last evening in the Lenox house, and his spirits, lifted for a
moment by her smile, went down again.
"Into the mist I gazed and fear came on me,
Then said the mist, 'I weep for the lost sun.'"
She sang passionately and he could have cried aloud. It was true then
that she was grieving for Dick.
"The music is uncanny, isn't it?" she said, as she ended and found him
near her. "How does it make you feel?"
"If I should find an image for my feelings just at present, you would
scorn me for my base material thoughts."
"Find it," she commanded.