Claire, without moving, turned her eyes on the door. “Here she is,” she said; and as her mother entered, she added, in the lowest voice above a whisper, so vaguely that it was like a fragrant perturbing influence breathing from the twilight and the spring air:
“I like to owe all my flowers to you.”
Already, as he rose to greet the mother, he liked the daughter less.
Madame Vicaud, in her black dress, with flowing white about her wrists and throat,—a throat erect and beautiful,—had closed the door softly behind her, and as she came toward him, Damier, involuntarily carrying further his Venusberg simile of some moments before, thought of an Elizabeth bringing peace and radiance; yet there was, too, a gravity in her gaze, a quick intentness that went swiftly from her daughter to him. Then the smile and the lightness masked her. She took his hand.
“Has not Sophie come yet? Of what have you been talking?”
“Of life, and how to live it,” laughed Damier.
“Wise young people! Was it a contest of sublimities?” Madame Vicaud laid down the evening wrap she had brought in, and, it seemed to Damier, averted her face from him as she took up a box of matches.
“Do I ever fight under the banner of sublimity, Mamma?” Claire inquired, looking out of the window, showing once more her accustomed lassitude and detachment. “I leave those becoming colors to you—and to Mr. Damier.”
“But don’t, even in jest, my dear, assume always the unbecoming ones,” Madame Vicaud replied, still with all her lightness, and bending, her face still averted, to strike a match. “You have discovered, have you not, Mr. Damier, that it is difficult for Claire to assume the virtues that she has?”
She moved about the room, lighting the candles on the mantelpiece and on the cabinet where her husband’s portrait stood; and Damier, watching the swift blackness of her girlish figure, the slender white of her uplifted hand,—the black more black, the white more white, as the radiance slowly grew in the dim room,—still fancied that she was mastering some emotion, hiding from him some sudden agitation. There was a faint flush on her face as she turned, gaily and sweetly, blowing out and tossing away her match, to welcome Sophie.