Anne had caught this, and for a minute she thought that Joan had raised her voice for that very purpose. Had Prescott, then, told Joan that Anne too had wanted a way out of life, and almost found it, because of youth and love? But Ariel alone knew that. And Anne’s sordid secret was as safe with Ariel as it would be with the Wild Acres woods, or with the sky, had she made her confidences to either. Anne was certain.
She turned away from Joan’s group, hard, austere. Glenn might be won to Joan by her beauty and charm, in spite of her terrible part in the tragedy of his friend. Hugh might marry Joan. But Anne knew at that moment that she herself would never again, after this night, be able to bear the sight or the sound of her. “She’s horrible,” she thought. “A glutton of love. A walking sore of vanity. It isn’t jealousy that makes me see her this way. Even to be loved by Prescott I would not be anything like Joan Nevin. I’d rather Prescott never gave me a thought again through eternity than have any touch of that stinking vanity, scarring my voice and face as it scars Joan’s to-night. I’m the only one who sees. She’s horrid, rotten.” And she went over to stand with Michael Schwankovsky and Charlie Frye and Ariel before the painting of Gregory Clare’s which Joan had bought for herself and which now hung between the long windows in the drawing-room, where the party was to wait for the announcement of dinner.
But even here she could not escape Joan’s echoes. As Anne joined the group, Charlie Frye was saying, “... wonderful! Of course, she knows, just as we all know, that it’s she young Enderly went off his head over. She goes on with it all, though. Entertains us. It’s magnificent of her, I think. But she’s pale to-night....”
Anne gripped Ariel’s hand hard and cried with stifled violence, “Merely a matter of leaving off rouge! Very effective too,”—and wanted to bite her tongue out when she had said it. Michael Schwankovsky looked at her, whether disgusted or quizzically she didn’t know. Or care! Charlie Frye bit his lips to keep an angry retort back, and frowned at the floor. But Ariel threw an arm about Anne’s shoulder, and Anne felt that she was trembling in unison with her.
The long windows leading onto the terraced rose-garden were open throughout dinner. Candlelight, moonlight, rose scents and the glowing colors of the other women’s evening frocks were all mingled for Ariel in a web of sensuous pleasure which mixed with a mind almost as anguished as her friend Anne’s.
Schwankovsky occupied the head of the table, where he played host spectacularly, with a noisy zeal. Ariel, in whose honor the party had been planned, was given the place of honor at his right. Mrs. Weyman was opposite Ariel at his other side.
Glenn on Ariel’s right remembered poignantly the first meal she had had with them, how she had been as silent as now, but with a different silence. Then she had bent with the flow of talk as forget-me-nots bent in a grassy stream, flowing with it, not obstructing it. But to-night she was withdrawn, on purpose. And she looked often at Anne, Glenn noticed, with a tender, watchful regard. Why, Glenn could not imagine, for Anne by this time was entering into everything exuberantly, as she had promised him and herself she would. Charlie Frye, quite over his earlier irritation with her, was merry as a grig. Anne was flirting with him, a little clumsily, perhaps, but effectively, if one judged from the man’s reactions. What Glenn did not notice, but Ariel did, was that Anne, on the evening when Joan Nevin had left off her rouge, had painted her own face most brilliantly.
The talk flowed on. Chatter about summer plans, their own and other people’s. Gossip about Doctor Steiner who had just been given a degree by conservative Harvard. Would he go to make his home in Vienna next year, as he was threatening, or stay to enrich America with his knowledge and genius? Some desultory discussions, too, of music, plays, books and painting.
Suddenly, in a way that he intended to be confidential and intimate but could not make so because of his size and the timbre of his voice which even when consciously lowered compelled the attention of the whole table, Schwankovsky leaned to Ariel and took her wrist in his fingers. “My own darling child, you are triste. At this, your own party! But, believe me, some day very soon, it will be forgotten.... You’ll be rid of grief.... Your old friend knows.... And grief so pure as yours is pure, unstained by remorse, leaves no sediment of heaviness when time has once flowed over it and past. It is a good fortune to have youth and grief together. Some day you will think so.... This is a very beautiful aquamarine, Ariel!”
He lifted her hand higher, and looked long and delightedly at the heavy silver ring with its beautifully colored and flawless stone, which Ariel was wearing.