If I had not been an architect, with a knowledge of interior decoration as part of my profession, I might not have been worried by the sybaritic note in Cantyre’s rooms. Being fond of flowers, he had sheaves of gladioluses and chrysanthemums wherever he could stack them. Over the tables he threw bits of beautiful old brocades, ineffable in color. Framed and glazed, a seventeenth-century chasuble embroidered in carnations did duty as a fire-screen. Japanese pottery grotesques and Barye bronzes jostled one another on the mantelpiece and low bookcases, while the latter housed rows of handsome volumes bound to suit Cantyre’s special taste and stamped with his initials. He himself, stretched in a long chair, wore a dressing-gown of an indescribable shade of plum faced with an equally indescribable shade of blue. The plum socks and blue leather slippers couldn’t have been an accident; and as I had dropped in on him unexpectedly I knew that all this recherche was not to dazzle any one—I could have forgiven that—but for his own enjoyment.
No one could have been kinder to me than he was—and I liked him. I reminded myself that it was none of my business if his tastes were fastidious, and that to spend his money this way was better than in lounging about bar-rooms, as I had done; and yet I could understand that a girl like Regina Barry should be impatient of these traits in a husband.
I sat, however, with my back to it all, astride of a small chair, my pipe in my mouth, looking down on the lights and traffic.
Breaking a long silence, I said, as casually as I could do it: “I met Sterling Barry’s daughter the other day—Miss Regina Barry, her name is, isn’t it?”
Vague, restless movements preceded the laconic response, “Where?”
“She came to the memorial with Mrs. Grace.”
Hearing him strike a match, I knew he was making an effort at sang-froid by lighting a cigarette.
“Did you—did you—think her—pretty?”
“Pretty wouldn’t be the word.”