She often dropped into the Twenty-Eighth Street house, and praised its appointments warmly. "Your little reception-room is perfect," she told Claire, "with those dark crimson walls and that furniture so covered with big pink roses. I like it immensely, don't you know? I wouldn't have liked it two or three years ago; I would have thought crimson and pink a weird discord; but fashion gives certain things their stamp; it makes us wake up, some morning, and find our hates turned to loves." About the dining-room, on the same floor, and the drawing-room, on the floor above, she was genially critical. This or that detail she discovered to be "not just quite right, don't you know?" and Claire in nearly all such cases changed dissent into agreement after a little serious reflection. Some of the resultant alterations involved decided expense. This Claire regretted while she would let her husband incur it. Hollister always did so readily enough. Wall Street had rather smiled upon him, of late. A few of his ventures had become bolder, but flattering successes had persistently followed them.
"The theatre is all lit," he said to her one evening, "but the curtain doesn't rise. How is that, Claire?"
She knew perfectly well what he meant, but chose to feign that she did not know. They had been surveying together a few decorative improvements, recently wrought, in mantel, dado, or even table-cover.
"I don't think I follow your metaphor," said Claire. There was the tiny outbreak of a smile at each corner of her mouth. It struck Hollister, who was standing quite near her, that she looked delightfully prim. He kissed her before he answered, and then, while he did so, let his lips almost graze her ear, saying in an absurd guttural semitone, as of melo-dramatic confidence:—
"I mean that it's time for Act First. Time for the lords and ladies to enter, with a grand flourish of trumpets. Of course, when they do come, they'll all kiss the hand of their charming hostess, just like this."
But she would not let him kiss her hand, though he caught it and made the attempt.
"There are no lords and ladies in New York," she said, laughing and receding from him at the same time. "And if they should come, they would never behave in such an old-fashioned style as that."
But though she treated them lightly, his words fed the fuel of her deep, keen longing. She had made up her mind that Mrs. Diggs had been right. She would never be content to take a low place. Nothing save the highest of all would ever satisfy her.
At the same time she clearly understood that great sums of money were needed to accomplish any such end. She spent several days of brooding trouble. She had not great sums of money—or rather, Hollister had not. And there seemed slight chance of her husband ever securing them.
"The season is dreadfully young yet," said Mrs. Diggs to her, the next day, while they sat together. "There is simply nothing going on. There are no teas, no receptions, and, of course, no balls. But we'll go and take our drive in the Park. Do hurry and dress."