"'Even the worthy Homer sometimes nods,'" he was quoting gayly. "Wake up, Roger. Visitors!"
I started to my feet in much embarrassment. "Miss Van Wyck, Miss Gore—Mr. Canby," said Jerry, and I found myself bowing to a very handsome young person, dressed in an outdoor suit of a vivid, cherry color. I had no time to study her carefully at the moment, but took the hand she thrust forward and muttered something.
"I feel very guilty," she was saying. "It's all my fault, Mr. Canby. I've been simply wild for years to see what was inside the wall."
"I hope it will not disappoint you," I said urbanely.
"It's very wonderful. I don't wonder Jerry never wanted to leave. I shouldn't have gone—ever. A wall around one's own particular Paradise! Could anything be more rapturous?"
("Jerry!" They were progressing.)
The tone was thin, gentle and studiously sweet, and her face, I am forced to admit, was comely. Its contour was oval, slightly accented at the cheek bones, and its skin was white and very smooth. Her lips were sensitive and scarlet, like an open wound. Her eyes, relics, like the cheek bones, of a distant Slav progenitor, were set very slightly at an angle and were very dark, of what color I couldn't at the moment decide, but I was sure that their expression was remarkable. They were cool, appraising, omniscient and took me in with a casual politeness which neglected nothing that might have been significant. I am not one of those who find mystery and enigma in women's reticences, which are too often merely the evasions of ignorance or duplicity. But I admit that this girl Marcia puzzled me. Her characteristics clashed—cool eyes with sensual lips, clear voice with languid gestures, a pagan—that was how she impressed me then, a pagan chained by convention.
As I had foreseen, when she and Jerry went off to the Museum, I was left to the poor relation. She was tall, had a Roman nose, black hair, folded straight over her ears, and wore glasses. When I approached she was examining a volume on the library table, a small volume, a thin study of modern women that I had picked up at a book store in town. Miss Gore smiled as she put the volume down, essaying, I suppose, that air of cheerfulness of which Jerry had boasted.
"'Modern Woman,'" she said in a slow and rather deep voice, and then turning calmly, "I was led to, understand, Mr. Canby, that you weren't interested in trifles."
"I'm not," I replied, "but I can't deny their existence."