The Marquis watched her cross the room and sighed. At thirty-nine, he thought, she was wonderfully young. Her figure was a little more mature, but in all other respects she seemed only to have found poise and assurance with the passing years. He leaned back in his chair almost with a sense of luxury. He was back again in the atmosphere which had kept him young, the atmosphere which unconsciously had hung around him and kept him warm and contented—kept him, too, from looking over the edge into strange places. The room was deliciously feminine, notwithstanding a certain fascinating disorder. There were magazines, Reviews and illustrated papers everywhere in evidence, an open box of cigarettes upon the chimneypiece, an armful of flowers thrown loose upon the table, as well as the roses upon her desk. One of her gloves lay upon a chair by the side of a pile of proofs. It seemed to him that there were some new photographs on the mantelpiece, but his own, in the uniform of his county yeomanry, still occupied the central position. There were songs upon the piano; on the sideboard a silver cocktail shaker, and, as he noticed with a little pang, two glasses. Nevertheless, he sat there waiting in great content until Marcia came in, dressed for the street. She was followed by a servant with some ice upon a tray, and bottles.
"Now for my new vice," she exclaimed gaily, taking up the cocktail shaker and half filling it with ice. "You are not going to be obstinate, are you?"
"I shall take anything you may give me, with great pleasure," he assured her, a little stiffly.
She saw him looking at the second glass, and laughed.
"It is Phyllis Grant who is responsible for this," she explained. "She lives in the next flat, you know, and she comes in most days, either before luncheon or before dinner, for an apéritif and a cigarette."
The Marquis's face cleared. He drank his cocktail and pronounced it delicious. On the threshold he paused and looked back.
"I like your little room, Marcia," he said. "I find it a strange thing to confess, but there is nowhere else in the world where I feel quite as much at home, quite as contented, as I do here."
She seemed almost startled, for a moment unresponsive. Such a speech was so unlike him that it seemed impossible that he could be in earnest. She walked down the stairs by his side with a new gravity in her face. Perhaps he noticed it. At any rate, as soon as they were seated in the car he began to talk to her.
"The object of Mr. Borden's visit to me, I gathered, was to impress upon me the fact that by marrying him you would gain many advantages from which you are at present debarred. I naturally made no comment, nor did I argue the matter with him. I have come to you."
She sat silent in her corner. Her eyes were fixed upon a nursemaid, with two or three young children, passing by. Suddenly she touched her companion on the arm and pointed to them.