But it wasn't the right number: there were no gardens in it. Why had Miss Vollard given it to him? As he fluttered the pages they dropped open at: "Oriental Sage in Native Garb"—. Oh, damn the Mahatma! "Dawnside Co-Eds"—oh, damn...
He stood up to thrust the paper under one of the heavily-shaded lamps. At home, where Pauline and reason ruled, the lighting was disposed in such a way that one could always read without moving from one's chair; but in this ridiculous house, where no one ever opened a book, the lamps were so perversely placed, and so deeply shrouded, that one had to hold one's paper under the shade to make out anything.
He scrutinized the picture, shrugged away his disgusted recognition of Bee Lindon, looked again and straightened his eye-glasses on his nose to be doubly sure—the lawyer's instinct of accuracy prevailing over a furious inward tremor.
He walked to the door, and then turned back and stood irresolute. To study the picture he had lifted the border of the lampshade, and the light struck crudely on the statue above Lita's divan; the statue of which Pauline (to her children's amusement) always said a little apprehensively that she supposed it must be Cubist. Manford had hardly noticed the figure before, except to wonder why the young people admired ugliness: half lost in the shadows of the niche, it seemed a mere bundle of lumpy limbs. Now, in the glare—"Ah, you carrion, you!" He clenched his fist at it. "That's what they want—that's their brutish idol!" The words came stammering from him in a blur of rage. It was on Jim's account ... the shock, the degradation... The paper slipped to the floor, and he dropped into his seat again.
Slowly his mind worked its way back through the disgust and confusion. Pauline had been right: what could one expect from a girl brought up in that Landish house? Very likely no one had ever thought of asking where she was, where she had been—Mrs. Landish, absorbed in her own silly affairs, would be the last person to know.
Well, what of that? The modern girl was always free, was expected to know how to use her freedom. Nona's independence had been as scrupulously respected as Jim's; she had had her full share of the perpetual modern agitations. Yet Nona was firm as a rock: a man's heart could build on her. If a woman was naturally straight, jazz and night-clubs couldn't make her crooked...
True, in Nona's case there had been Pauline's influence: Pauline who, whatever her faults, was always good-humoured and usually wise with her children. The proof was that, while they laughed at her, they adored her: he had to do her that justice. At the thought of Pauline a breath of freshness and honesty swept through him. He had been unfair to her lately, critical, irritable. He had been absorbing a slow poison, the poison emanating from this dusky self-conscious room, with all its pernicious implications. His first impression of Lita, when he had thought her ugly and pretentious, rushed back on him, dissipating the enchantment.
"Oh, I'm glad you waited—" She was there before him, her little heart-shaped face deep in its furs, like a bird on the nest. "I wanted to see you today; I willed you to wait." She stood there, her head slightly on one side, distilling her gaze through half-parted lids like some rare golden liquid.
Manford stared back. Her entrance had tangled up the words in his throat: he stood before her choked with denunciation and invective. And then it occurred to him how much easier it was just to say nothing—and to go. Of course he meant to go. It was no business of his: Jim Wyant was not his son. Thank God he could wash his hands of the whole affair.
He mumbled: "Dining out. Can't wait."