"Life!"
* * * * *
The Saturday afternoon following, in a brownstone house in West Forty-sixth Street that was more like a museum of the storied loot of many lands, Trieste himself opened the pair of Florentine doors, originally unhinged from a campanile outside of Rome, of his very private studio, without appointment, to the magic of Gedney Daab's scrawled card.
He had a head, Lilly decided, like the one of Praxiteles in the St. Louis Museum of Fine Arts—only, the bust implied young hair, and Trieste's curls were full of gray and the lines of his face were slashed deeply. He listened, while Lilly talked her brief preamble, as he invariably did, with his eyes closed and finger tips touching. Finally, he opened them, regarding Lilly from under swollen, rather diabetic lids.
"You should sing," he said, his acquired language grating slightly against the native one.
"No! No!"
"You are young," he said, running his eyes down her body, "and fine and big and strong."
She rose as if to throw off the crowding stress of the moment.
"Once," she said; "but that is all over now. My little girl—"
"You have temperament—let me hear," he said, reaching out to the piano and striking out a bold C. "Sing the scale."