"I like Delmonico's," said Joan. "We'll often dine there. And the play was perfectly splendid. What a lot of others there are to see! I don't think we'll let the grass grow under our feet, Marty. And presently we'll have some very proper little dinner parties in this room, won't we? Interesting, vital people, who must all be good-looking and young. It will be a long time before I shall want to see anyone old again. Think what Alice Palgrave will say when she comes back! She'll underline every word if she can find any words. She wasn't married till she was twenty."
And presently, having pecked at an admirable fruit salad, just sipped a glass of wine and made close-fitting plans that covered at least a month, Joan rose. "I shall go up now, Marty," she said. "It's twelve o'clock."
He watched her go upstairs with his heart in his throat. Surely this was all a dream, and in a moment he would find himself rudely and coldly awake, standing in the middle of a crowded, lonely world? But she stopped on the landing, turned, smiled at him and waved her hand. He drew in a deep breath, went back into the dining room, put his lips to the violets that had been touched by her face, and switched off the lights. The scent of spring was in the air.
"Come in," she said, when presently, after a long pause, he knocked at her door.
She was sitting at a gleaming dressing table in something white and clinging, doing her hair that was so soft and brown and electrical.
He dared not trust himself to speak. He sat down on the edge of a sofa at the foot of the bed and watched her.
She went on brushing but with her unoccupied hand gathered her gown about her. "What is it, Marty?" she asked quietly.
"Nothing," he said, finding something that sounded curiously unlike his voice.
She could see his young, eager face and broad shoulders in the looking-glass. His hands were clasped tightly round one knee.
"I've been listening to the sound of traffic," she said. "That's the sort of music that appeals to me. It seems a year since I did my hair in that great, prim room and heard the owls cry and watched myself grow old. Just think! It's really only a few hours ago that I dropped my suit-case out of a window and climbed down the creeper. We said we'd make things move, didn't we?"