“Did she?” Hester’s eyelids opened and then drooped again. “She knew that would be the way to make you sing, or she wouldn’t have said it. How mean women are! I’m beginning to hate her, too. Are you sorry?”
“Sorry? No. Why should I be sorry? Sweet—you’ve got this idea that I’ve a fancy for her—it’s foolish.”
“Is it? You look a little sorry, though, because I said I should hate her. She’s better looking than I am.”
“She!” Crowdie laughed again, the same gentle, lulling, golden laugh. “Besides—I told you—she can’t bear me.”
“I hate her for that, too—for loving your voice as she does, and not liking you. And I shall hate her if her father gets all the money that ought to come to us, because if I ever get it, I’m going to make you do all you’ve ever dreamed of doing with it. You shall build your palace like the one at Agra—Griggs will help you, for he knows everything—you shall do all you’ve ever dreamed—we’ll have the alabaster room with the light shining through the walls—you shall sing to me there, by the fountain—but you shan’t sing to Katharine Lauderdale—there, nor anywhere else—Walter, you shan’t—”
“She’s got into your head, love—” Crowdie’s red lips kissed the bloodless hand, and his beautiful eyes looked up to Hester’s face. “It’s a foolish thought, sweet! Let me kiss it away.”
Hester said nothing, but her own eyes burned, and her nostrils quivered like white rose leaves in the breeze, delicate, diaphanous, passionate. A little shiver ran through her, and she sighed.
“Sing to me,” she said. “Sing what you sang to her the other night. Make the song mine again. Make it forget her. Sing softly, very softly—soft, soft—you know how I love the notes—”
She closed her burning eyes, but not so wholly but what she could see him, as she threw back her head upon the cushions.
Crowdie sat motionless beside her, watching her. His lips were parted as though he were just about to sing, but no sound escaped them. In the heavy, perfumed air the stillness was intense, and it was warm.