“We weren’t fighting,” said Grant curtly.
Mrs. Grey allowed her sea blue eyes, cold and sparkling as salt water, to rest on Joy for one pungent moment. The air tingled with omission. She spoke finally, as she rose from the table: “We shall hope to hear you sing later in the day, Miss Nelson.”
A stupid, hot Sunday, composed of working through the Sunday papers, sitting on the piazza talking about weather probabilities, and keeping maids perspiring to bring cooling drinks. Grant and Joy had no excuse to slip away, with the events of the day before stalking in the minds if not the words of the Greys, and the stubborn fact that Joy was nominally Betty’s guest. Betty remarked that it was a pity church attendance had gone out of style; it did fill in part of Sunday, anyway. She had suggested golf, which Joy did not play, and tennis, which Joy had expressed a willingness to watch; and everyone had unanimously declared that it was too hot to go down on the beach in the blaze of the sun. Motoring was voted down, since on Sunday “there was such a fearful rabble in the road,” and the day groaned away in an agony of repressions for Grant and Joy.
Towards evening, as it grew cooler, some callers arrived, and Betty pointed out that now was the time for Joy to sing. So Joy sang—not the “Unrealized Ideal” this time, but some little French songs which evoked polite murmurs of appreciation from the guests who were of the type that know nothing about music and care less, but know that it is the thing to appreciate it. And then Betty, rolling her eyes in a manner she considered romantic, requested “Last Night.”
The room with its conventional puppets of listeners faded away; Joy was only conscious of one intent brown face. What if all day they had been and still were hedged about by tiresome details; she could speak to him if there were thousands listening. Oh, to make love with one’s voice:
“I think of you in the daytime
I dream of you by night
I wake and would you were here, love
And tears are blinding my sight.
I hear a low breath in the lime-tree