As he mounted the broad stone stairway, the man following, his glance rested on a tapestry—a Medici tapestry, if he knew anything about it. “Whew!” he thought. But his eyes were just a little hard now. Marian would take and take—and give nothing. All the same, what did she get from it? Again he felt suddenly unreasoningly sorry for her.
The butler conducted Stacey to the south end of the upper hall, tapped perfunctorily at a door, opened it, and Stacey went in.
The room he entered was a small sitting-room—Marian’s own, most certainly—English in feeling, crowded with a great many things. Or, rather, no, on second thought Stacey knew it well:—it was like what pleasant English people did sometimes to their smallest, best loved room in a Tuscan villa. The French windows were wide open, but the heavy wooden shutters were closed to shut out the heat, so that only a soft summer air entered, with perfumes from the garden outside. There was a kind of radiant greenish twilight in the room.
No one was there, though a flame burned beneath a silver kettle, two fragile cups stood ready, and a tea-wagon with bread and butter and cake was drawn up near the table. After perhaps a minute Marian entered through another door.
She was wearing a simple dress of a pearl gray color, short, as the fashion was, and with a silver cord about the waist. She looked as Greek as any one or anything modern could look, and Stacey drew in his breath sharply with admiration of her beauty. Nevertheless, as he shook hands with her and replied to her apparently natural greeting, he was wary. All this delightful readiness for his visit, the coziness, the shining tea things, Marian herself. . . . “ ‘I mistrust the Greeks and the gifts they bring,’ ” he said to himself suddenly, and smiled, finding the quotation apt, Marian looking as she did. But he kept it to himself.
Marian sat down at the table, but remained for a moment gracefully idle, smiling at him, before beginning to make the tea.
“You see all my preparations, Stacey,” she said lightly. “You see what an event it is when you come. Aren’t you flattered?”
“You know I am,” he returned, almost disarmed now by her remark. And this was true. For Stacey was genuinely anxious to be friends with Marian. After all, at bottom he was a simple person. That is, he was complex only on his receptive side. He could perceive, quite without effort, the subtlest, most tangled, personal relationships all about him, whether or not he was himself involved in them; he had always been able to do this. But the real Stacey Carroll in the centre of this rich shimmering web remained simple. The impulses on which he acted were simple, almost boyish sometimes.
Marian and Stacey were both silent while she measured out the tea and poured the hot water. Gazing at her so closely, he noted that she was very thin. Her fine pointed face was almost sharp, and her bare arms, lifted prettily to the silver urn, were too slender. Stacey was sorry. But, considering himself questioningly, he recognized that this half-pity for Marian, together with an artist’s admiration of her loveliness, was all that he felt for her now. Absolutely all. No touch of love remained. And Stacey was immensely relieved.
“It has to brew seven minutes,” said Marian, glancing at her tiny turquoise-incrusted wrist-watch, then leaning back in a corner of her chair and resting her long slim hands on one arm of it.