Roberts’ wide blue eyes looked white in the twilight.
“We’ve been fools, Martin. We should never quarrel. Let’s forget all this. Come on.” He was like a small boy pulling at Martin’s arm. “We’ll have wine and chicken. We’ll have mushrooms.”
It might have been a sob.
“I can’t.”
Roberts, blinded to Martin, stared at him. Then he turned swiftly. His eyes darkened in the first lights of evening and he walked hurriedly away.
Roberts’ face superimposed the view from the window where Martin stood with Deane. Its expression was somber and equivocal. Through this skeletal haze they watched the city’s significant pantomime—the silhouettes and flashings, the play of shadows below them.
“You’ve seen Roberts, haven’t you?” asked Deane quite suddenly.
Martin looked down at her bright sandals. She was wearing a deep blue hostess gown, nearly the color of the evening sky. A burnished cross, held by a woven cord, fell from her throat and lay between her breasts, and again Martin saw the silver within her hair as mast lights over the water.
She picked up a cigarette and lit it for him. Around the tip, the moist red paste from her lips left a scarlet ring. She put the cigarette in Martin’s mouth.
“Yes,” he said, holding the smoke in his lungs, “I’ve seen Roberts. But he has no place up here.”