Lady Silverstairs laughed and employing a darkyism, said: “You don’t say turkey to me. There!” she exclaimed as Verplank was about to protest. “I could not anyway.”
From the salon beyond came a woman’s voice, clear and rich, rendering, in a lascive contralto, a song of love and passion.
The Silverstairs and Verplank approached. Meanwhile, from the diva’s mouth, notes darted like serpents on fire. In mounting fervour the aria developed, trailing, as it climbed, words such as amore, speranza, morir. A breath of brutality passed. The atmosphere became charged with emanations in which the perfume of women mingled with the desires of men. Still the aria mounted, it coloured the air, projecting, like a magic lantern, visions of delight, imperial and archaic, that ascended in glittering scales.
Verplank, detaching himself from the Silverstairs, felt his dumb rage renewed. At the moment he conceived an insane idea of going below, waiting without until Barouffski and Leilah appeared and he saw himself, confronting the man, tearing the woman from him, carrying her off and making her his own.
The impulse fell from him. The rage that he felt at the man deflected into rage at this woman who had made his life a vacant house and for what, good God! And why?
In a cascade of flowers and flames the song was ending. There was new applause, the discreet approbation of worldly people, easily pleased, as easily bored and with but one sure creed: Not too much of anything.
Verplank must also have had enough. When presently the Silverstairs looked about for him he had gone.
Already Violet had summarised the situation to her lord. Now, perplexed at Verplank’s abrupt disappearance, she said:
“You don’t suppose that anything will happen, do you?”