She glanced up, but she did not blush. On the contrary, the hot weather had made her unusually pale.
“Hello, Leonard!” she replied in her usual serious and friendly way.
But he was not quite as usual. He could not help thinking that if she had been waiting for him, it would be a curiously agreeable thing.
“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said.
“I’ve been to the house for dinner two or three times,” said Violet; “but you weren’t home, and I can’t stay overnight any more, on account of Aunt Jean having the spare room.”
Violet lived in a furnished room on West Twelfth Street, and she had been in the habit of spending the week-ends with her sister; but not any more. She had been sacrificed. Compared with Aunt Jean’s million, all Violet’s kindnesses, her loyal assistance in family crises, didn’t count at all. She looked pale and jaded, and she had grown so extraordinarily pretty in these last weeks! Leonard had been missing her—that was what was the matter with him.
Over her shoulder, he looked at the model love nests in the window. One of them was lighted now; there were curtains in its tiny windows, through which shone a mellow pink glow. Wilder knew that there was nothing inside except an electric bulb with a crape paper shade, and yet—
Somewhere there was a real house just like it, softly lighted in the summer dusk, with flowers in a little garden. He could imagine that a tired man, coming home to a house like that—to a smile, a kiss, to quiet and tenderness—might find even one of Connolly’s love nests not without beauty.
“Vi!” he said.
This time she did blush, and glanced away.