"I shall be giving dinner-parties for him every evening. Would you care to come?"
They had reached cavernous steps down which Cassy was going.
Lennox raised his hat. "I will come to-night."
Through the metallic roar, the four words dropped and hummed.
XXXVIII
"It is going to be splendid. There will be candles!"—a young person, dead since but still living, exclaimed of her poet's fête. The fête, however lavish, and which you will find reported by Murger, was not held in a kitchen. The poet's garret did not contain a kitchen. That was Paris.
Hereabouts, nowadays, walk-ups are more ornate. Cassy's dinner that night was served on rich linoleum and not out of snobbishness either but because the table had gone from the living-room and though the piano remained one could not very well dine on that, or, for that matter, on the sofa. There are details into which a hostess never enters. Cassy—in black chiffon—did not offer any and Lennox—in evening clothes—did not ask. He had never dined in a kitchen before and, so far as the present historian knows not to the contrary, he did not dine in one again. But he enjoyed the experience. There was cold chicken, a salad, youth, youth's wine and running laughter. For dessert, a remark.
The rich linoleum then had been abandoned for the other room where Cassy sat on the sofa and Lennox on the one surviving chair. Beyond was the piano. Additionally, in some neighbourly flat, a phonograph performed.
Among these luxuries sweets were served. A question preceded them.