"Tell the truth," Lincoln said, "I've got a little party to-night. A party as is a party—Spanish girls, Spanish dancers ... I wish I could take you, but it ain't my party...."
"Then I'll see Miss Hagen home."
Dog-gone, Lincoln would have to go down to the club and tell 'em how Campbell of the Maid of the Isles got stuck with the human iceberg!
§ 5
Without, the west wind had increased suddenly, a cold steady wind, coasting down the Argentine pampas, bending the sparse trees and giant thistle, ruffling the river, shallowing it, until to-morrow many a poor sailorman would regret his optimistic anchorage ... Shane shivered.... To-morrow October would be making a din in the streets.... And the poor skippers fighting their way round the Horn, icy winds and head seas and immense gray dirty-bearded waves.... To-morrow three men were to be shot in the 25 de Mayo for a political offense, and Shane could see them in the bleak dawn, three frightened stanch figures; the soldiers would be blowing their fingers in the cold air, and their triggers would be like ice to the touch ... the shoddy tragedy....
But within the room was warm, a little fire of coal in the unusual grate, and the soft and mellow lights of candles, and here and there gauchos' blankets on the wall, and here a comfortable chair and there a table of line, and brass things ... clean and ascetic, and yet something womanly about the place, the grace and composition of things.... And with her coming into her house, Hedda Hagen's manner had changed gently.... She was no longer frigid, aloof.... She unbent into calm smiles, and the grace of a hostess of the big world ... the quiet masonic signal of a certain caste....
"I wonder," he said; "am I dreaming?"
She paused suddenly. She had taken her hat off, and was touching things on the tables with her large fine hands. She turned her head toward him. There was a half smile in her eyes.
"Why?"
"It doesn't seem right."