“It is not marriage-love. Your father has never loved me like that!”
“Poor mamma!” murmured Katya; “poor mamma! But don’t you wish he had?”
Fallon was with the Kontorompas almost every hour of every day. In the afternoons, when Mrs. Kontorompa slept, the two lovers played pianoforte duets in the big, deserted lounge. Fallon was a masterful pianist, and he played in a manner that suggested intense hunger of the soul. In these hours he had no courtesy, and when she bungled a passage he would scowl at her and call her a little fool. And at this she would laugh and play carelessly in order to taste his anger once again....
“To-day is Thursday,” announced Katya, one morning, as she and her mother breakfasted alone in their room.
“So it is,” agreed her mother, without conviction.
“But I mean it’s the Thursday. This evening Guy will ask me to marry him. After dinner he and I will walk to the White Tower. There we shall get a boat. Guy will row. There will be a moon.”
She spoke as though she had arranged for the moon to be there.
“Do take care of yourself, dear. Mr. Fallon is so dark and so ... so impulsive. You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know what you mean, mamma; but those little rowing-boats are quite safe in more senses than one.”
And because she was so anxious for the evening to come, Katya found the bright hours of the day tepid and slow. She was very quiet and subdued in the afternoon, when Fallon found her in the empty lounge.