"And you are going to think of nothing but amusing yourself all your life?" he asked slowly.
"Why not?" she answered lightly.
Powers turned his face away in quick vexation, to encounter his mother's disapproving glance focused on Eleanor from a near-by table.
For Lady Fiske, ever ready to further her son's scientific projects, had lent the girl her social patronage, and had tried to blind herself to the arrant selfishness and inconsideration that she everywhere encountered in their intercourse. Between Eleanor and Powers' sister Marian there was almost less in common, for the Eleanor of a month ago had ceased to exist. Beautiful, brilliant, hard, she flitted like a butterfly through the world that Powers had promised her, beating her wings in a mad pursuit of amusement and pleasure, commanding homage and self-sacrifice with a touch as hard as steel.
Powers breathed a long sigh and there was a careworn look in his eyes as he glanced again at the girl in front of him.
Almost immediately Lady Fiske rose, and the women passed out. Trowse stood back among the shadows behind the small table at which he had been sitting, and steadfastly watched the girl of whom he and Marian Fiske had been talking. Prosperity had indeed had a wonderful effect upon Eleanor's looks. The light of perfect health had flushed her delicate cheeks, her figure had filled out; she carried herself with a grace and confidence which took no count of those days of slow torture through which she had passed. Yet there was about her beauty some faint note of peculiarity which had puzzled others before Trowse. He asked himself what it was as she passed out, a queen running the gantlet of a court of admiring eyes, fresh, exquisitely natural, the living embodiment of light-hearted gaiety. When at last the door was closed and the men drew nearer together, he smiled quietly to himself.
"It is like one of those pictures," he murmured, "which come near to breaking the heart of the painter. It is perfect in color and form, it is beautiful—and yet it does not live. There is no background."
He moved to a table nearer the center of the room from which he could watch his host. The heavily shaded lights were kind enough to the faces of the men who sat laughing together over their cigarettes, but Trowse was a keen watcher, and he saw things which were hardly apparent to a casual observer. Powers had altered during the last few months. There were curious lines about his mouth, his eyes were a little sunken, his geniality was a trifle forced. Trowse smiled grimly.
"Conscience!" he muttered to himself. "Powers was never quite free from the sentimentalities of life. What a fool to trifle with such an opportunity!"
He waited for his chance, and moved up presently to his host's table. Powers welcomed him, but without heartiness. It happened that for the moment the two were virtually isolated. Trowse leaned over toward the other.