The room was empty, but a canary in a gilded cage at the window broke into song as she entered. On a table stood a tray containing the remains of tea; and beside it there was a half-burned cigarette in a bronze Turkish bowl. A book—she saw instantly that it was a volume of the newest plays—lay face downward beneath a pair of eyeglasses, and a rug, which had fallen from the couch, was in a crumpled pile on the floor.
“So she isn’t out,” Margaret reflected; and turning at a sound, she confronted Rose Morrison.
For an instant it seemed to the older woman that beauty like a lamp blinded her eyes. Then, as the cloud passed, she realized that it was only a blaze, that it was the loveliness of dead leaves when they are burning.
“So you came?” said Rose Morrison, while she gazed at her with the clear and competent eyes of youth. Her voice, though it was low and clear, had no softness; it rang like a bell. Yes, she had youth, she had her flamboyant loveliness; but stronger than youth and loveliness, it seemed to Margaret, surveying her over the reserves and discriminations of the centuries, was the security of one who had never doubted her own judgment. Her power lay where power usually lies in an infallible self-esteem.
“I came to talk it over with you,” began Margaret quietly; and though she tried to make her voice insolent, the deep instinct of good manners was greater than her effort. “You tell me that my husband loves you.”
The glow, the flame, in Rose Morrison’s face made Margaret think again of leaves burning. There was no embarrassment, there was no evasion even, in the girl’s look. Candid and unashamed, she appeared to glory in this infatuation, which Margaret regarded as worse than sinful, since it was vulgar.
“Oh, I am so glad that you did,” Rose Morrison’s sincerity was disarming. “I hated to hurt you. You can never know what it cost me to write that letter; but I felt that I owed it to you to tell you the truth. I believe that we always owe people the truth.”
“And did George feel this way also?”
“George?” The flame mounted until it enveloped her. “Oh, he doesn’t know. I tried to spare him. He would rather do anything than hurt you, and I thought it would be so much better if we could talk it over and find a solution just between ourselves. I knew if you cared for George, you would feel as I do about sparing him.”
About sparing him! As if she had done anything for the last twenty years, Margaret reflected, except think out new and different ways of sparing George!