“I can't understand why you don't like old Kara,” rallied her husband.
“There are very many reasons,” she replied, a little curtly for her.
“Anyway,” said John Lexman, after a moment's thought, “his arrival is rather opportune. Where is he?”
“He is in the drawing-room.”
The Priory drawing-room was a low-ceilinged, rambling apartment, “all old print and chrysanthemums,” to use Lexman's description. Cosy armchairs, a grand piano, an almost medieval open grate, faced with dull-green tiles, a well-worn but cheerful carpet and two big silver candelabras were the principal features which attracted the newcomer.
There was in this room a harmony, a quiet order and a soothing quality which made it a haven of rest to a literary man with jagged nerves. Two big bronze bowls were filled with early violets, another blazed like a pale sun with primroses, and the early woodland flowers filled the room with a faint fragrance.
A man rose to his feet, as John Lexman entered and crossed the room with an easy carriage. He was a man possessed of singular beauty of face and of figure. Half a head taller than the author, he carried himself with such a grace as to conceal his height.
“I missed you in town,” he said, “so I thought I'd run down on the off chance of seeing you.”
He spoke in the well-modulated tone of one who had had a long acquaintance with the public schools and universities of England. There was no trace of any foreign accent, yet Remington Kara was a Greek and had been born and partly educated in the more turbulent area of Albania.
The two men shook hands warmly.