“I was afraid that’s what you’d say.” I sighed and returned to my squab.
I said no more about it, but when I got home my thoughts went back to it. I hated to think of Lizzie Harris in the company of such a man. If she was lacking in judgment and worldly knowledge some one ought to supply them for her. She was alone and a stranger. Mrs. Bushey had told me she came from California, and from what I’d heard, California’s golden lads and lassies scorned the craven deference to public opinion that obtains in the effete East. But she was in the effete East, and she must conform to its standards. She probably had never given them a thought and had no initiated guide to draw them to her attention. Whatever Betty might say, I was free to be friendly with whomever I pleased. That was one of the few advantages of being a widow, déracinée by four years in Europe. By the morning I had decided to put my age and experience at her service and this afternoon went up-stairs to begin doing it.
She was in her front room, sitting at a desk writing. A kimono of a bright blue crêpe enwrapped her, her dark hair, cloudy about the brows, was knotted loosely on the nape of her neck. She rose impulsively when she saw me, kissed me as if I was her dearest friend, then motioned me to the sofa, and went back to her place at the desk.
The room is like mine, only being in the mansard, the windows are smaller and have shelf-like sills. It was an odd place, handsome things and tawdry things side by side. In one corner stood a really beautiful cabinet of red Japanese lacquer, and beside it a three-legged wooden stool, painted white with bows of ribbon tied round each leg as if it was some kind of deformed household pet. Portions of Miss Harris’ wardrobe lay over the chairs, and the big black hat crowned the piano tool. On the window-sill, drooping and withered, stood a clump of cyclamen in a pot, wrapped in crimped green paper. Beside it was a plate of crackers and a paper bag, from whose yawning mouth a stream of oranges had run out, lodging in corners. The upright piano, its top covered with stacked music, the wintry light gleaming on its keys, stood across a rear angle of the room and gave the unkempt place an air of purpose, lent it a meaning.
It must be confessed Miss Harris did not look as if she needed assistance or advice. She was serene and debonair and the blue kimono was extravagantly becoming. I sat down upon the sofa against a pile of cushions. The bottom ones were of an astonishing hardness which obtruded through the softness of the top ones as if an eider-down quilt had been spread over a pile of bricks. I tried to look as if I hadn’t felt the bricks and smiled at Miss Harris.
“See what I’ve been doing,” she said, and handed me a sheet of note paper upon which were inscribed a list of names.
I looked over them and they recalled to my mind the heroines of G. P. R. James’ novels of which, in my teens, I had been fond.
“Suggestions for my stage name,” she explained. “How does number three strike you?”
Number three was Leonora Bronzino.
“That’s an Italian painter,” I answered.