Again he was silent. Two or three times he tried to find words, producing nothing but a stammering of incoherent syllables. “I—I can’t talk about it here, Barbe,” he managed to articulate at last. “You must let me come round and see you.”
It was her voice now that was dead. “When will you come, Rash?”
“Now—at once—if you can see me.”
“Then come.”
She put up the receiver without saying more. He knew that she knew. She knew at least that something had happened which was fatal to them both.
She received him not in the drawing-room, but in a little den on the right of the front door which was also alive with Miss Walbrook’s modern personality. A gold-colored portière from Albert Herter’s looms screened them from the hall, and the chairs were covered with bits of Herter tapestry representing fruits. A cabinet of old white Bennington faience stood against a wall, which was further adorned with three or four etchings of Sears Gallagher’s. Barbara wore a lacy thing in hydrangea-colored crêpe de chine, loosely girt with a jade-green ribbon tasselled in gold, the whole bringing out the faintly Egyptian note in her personality.
They dispensed with a greeting, because she spoke the minute he crossed the threshold of the room.
“Rash, what is it? Why couldn’t you tell me on the telephone?”
He wished now that he had. It would have saved this explanation face to face. “Because I couldn’t. Because—because I’ve been too much of an idiot to—to tell you about it—either on the telephone or in any other way.”