Abruptly he awoke.
"Will you come in?" Cassy was saying.
She had her every-day manner, her every-day clothes, her usual hat. Jones, noting these details, inwardly commended them. But at once, another detail was apparent. The entrance to the room where the Bella figlia had been succeeded by a dirge, was blocked. There was a table in it.
Cassy motioned. "I was trying to get it out when it got itself wedged there. Will you crawl under it, as I have to, or would you prefer to use it as a divan?"
"Where your ladyship crawleth, I will crawl," Jones gravely replied. "I just love going on all fours."
As he spoke he went under. With a sad little smile she followed.
"I know I ought to be in mourning," she told him as he brushed his knees.
She hesitated and sat down. She did not say that she lacked the money to buy the suits and trappings. She did not want to say that she had sold the table, which was the last relic of her early home, nor yet that she had been trying to get it out, in order to prevent the Jew purchaser from again coming in. Instead, she fingered her smock.
"I have been looking for an engagement and they don't want you in black."
Jones took a chair. "War has made mourning an anachronism in Europe. If it lasts long enough, it will do the same here and do the same with art. But you are very brave." He looked about. "I understood your father had a Cremona."