This brought the subject of Rose Cannon to an end and she was not alluded to again during the dinner. The conversation reverted to such happenings in the city as Berny thought might interest her husband, and it seemed to her that he was more pleased to sit and listen to her chatter of her sisters, the bank, the theaters, and the shops, than to dilate any further on his adventures in the snow-bound Sierra.
When the dinner was over, they returned to the front of the flat, where next to the parlor there was a tiny hall-room fitted up as a smoking-room and den. It was merely a continuation of the hall, and “the cozy corner” which Berny had had a Polk Street upholsterer construct in it, occupied most of the available space, and crowded such visitors as entered it into the corners. It had been Berny’s idea to have this room “lined with books” as she expressed it, but their joint possessions in this line consisting of some twenty-five volumes, and the fact that the contracted space made it impossible to accommodate both the books and the cozy corner, Berny had decided in favor of the latter. She now seated herself on the divan that formed the integral part of this construction, and, piling the pillows behind her, leaned luxuriously back under the canopy of variegated stuffs which was supported by two formidable-looking lances.
Dominick sat in his easy chair. He always smoked in this room and read the papers, and presently he picked them up from the table and began to look them over. The conversation languished, became spasmodic, and finally died away. Berny, leaning back on the cushions, tried several times to revive it, but her husband from among the spread sheets of the evening press answered her with the inarticulate sounds of mental preoccupation, and sometimes with no sound at all, till she abandoned the attempt and leaned back under the canopy in a silence that was not by any means the somnolent quietude of after-dinner torpor.
The clock hands were pointing to half-past nine when a ring at the bell was followed by the appearance of the Chinaman at the door, stating that the expressman had come with Mr. Ryan’s valises. Dominick threw down his papers and left the room. As Berny sat silent, she could hear the expressman’s gruff deep voice in the hall and the thuds of the valises as he thumped them down at the stair-head. Dominick answered him and there were a few more remarks, followed by the retreating sound of the man’s heavy feet on the stairs and the bang of the hall door. She sat looking at the clock, waiting for her husband to return, and then as he did not come and the hall seemed singularly quiet she leaned forward and sent an exploring glance down its dim length. Dominick was not there, but a square of light fell out from the open doorway of his room.
“Dominick,” she called, “what are you doing?”
He came to the door of the room in his shirt-sleeves, a tall figure looking lean and powerful in this closer-fitting and lighter garb.
“I’m unpacking my things, and then I’m going to bed.”
“Oh!” she answered with a falling inflection, leaning forward, with her elbows planted on her knees, craning her neck to see more plainly down the narrow passageway. “It’s only half-past nine; why do you want to go to bed so early?”
“I’m tired, and it will take me some time to get these things put away.”
“Can I help you?” she asked without moving.