"What patience!"
His eyes were fixed on the picture. "It must have taken patience to paint it. But patience gives us everything in this life." Alice was silent. "You don't agree with me?"
"How do you know that?"
"I feel it; the air is thick with your dissent. But, Alice, I am right and you are wrong."
Her name coming so suddenly and for the first time from his lips astonished her. Her heart sent its blood in protest to her very ears. In a room with other people nothing could be said. But she rose and turning from Kimberly called to her husband, asking if he were ready.
"Before you go I have a favor to ask," said Kimberly, intervening, and Kimberly's petitions had always something of the color of command. "I told you," he said, speaking to Alice, "of my mother's portrait. It is upstairs; will you come see it?"
"I should like very much to see it. Come, Walter," she held out her hand for her husband. "Mr. Kimberly wants us to see his mother's portrait."
Kimberly made no comment, but the manner with which he paused, waiting for MacBirney to join them, sufficiently indicated that he was conscious of waiting. When MacBirney noticed his attitude he moved from those he was with much more quickly than he would have done at his wife's behest. Dolly came with MacBirney and the four walked upstairs. Kimberly's rooms opened to the south. There were five in the apartment and while Kimberly excused himself to take MacBirney in for a moment to speak to his uncle, Dolly took Alice through Kimberly's suite.
"These rooms are charming!" exclaimed Alice, when the men came in to them. "You must see them, Walter. The breakfast room is dear."
They were standing in the library, which served as a writing room and a conference room. It was finished in oak and on the east the breakfast room opened, in white and green.