“They are very beautiful indeed,” she remarked with judicial approval, upon the completion of her task. Then, as upon an afterthought, she moved rapidly about, peering under the branches of the growing plants, and separating the cut flowers lightly with her hands. “There is no card anywhere, is there? I suppose you will want to leave a message? Here are pen and ink—if you wish to write anything.”
“Thank you,” Christian began, smilingly but with obvious hesitation. He looked at his watch. “If you don’t mind—if you’re quite sure I shan’t be in the way—I think I should like to wait till Miss Bailey comes.”
“Oh, you won’t be in the way,” the girl replied. She regarded him meditatively, with narrowed eyes. “I shouldn’t dust this room in any event—since the flowers are here; but you mustn’t come out into the big room—unless you want to get choked with blacks. Would you like a morning paper? I can send a boy out for one.”
“Thank you—you are very good—no,” Christian answered. “There are some books here—I shall amuse myself.”
The girl turned to leave him, and then on second thought moved over to the window and lifted the sash. “There’ll be no objection to your smoking if you like,” she informed him. Then she went out, closing the door behind her.
Christian walked to the window in turn, and looked down over the flowers to the narrow street below. It was full of young men in silk hats, toiling up the granite ascent like black ants. He reflected that they must be clerks and shopmen, going to their daily work from the Temple station or the Embankment. The suggestion of monotonous bondage which their swarming progress toward the wage-earning center gave forth, interested him. He yawned pleasurably at the thought of his own superb emancipation from duties and tasks of all descriptions.
He strolled over to the bookcase above the desk, and glanced at the volumes revealed through its glass doors. They seemed very serious books, indeed. “Economics of Socialism,” “Capitalist Production,” “The Ethics of Socialism,” “Towards Democracy”—so the titles ran that first met his eye. There were other groups—mainly of history and the essayists—but everything was substantial. His glance sought in vain any lightsome gleam of poetry or fiction. The legend on a thin red book, “Civilization: Its Cause and Cure,” whimsically caught his attention. He put his hand to the key in the bookcase door to get out the volume; then, hesitating, yawned, and looked over the shelves once more. There was nothing else—and really he desired to read nothing.
He would half recline in comfort upon the sofa instead, until his friend came. As a pleasing adjunct to this plan, he drew the table up close, and found room upon it, by crowding them together, for most of the flowers that had been bestowed elsewhere. He seated himself at his ease, with his head resting against the wall, and surveyed the plants and blossoms in affectionate admiration. It was delicious to think how naïve her surprise would be—how great her pleasure! Truly, since his discovery of his birthright, remarkable and varied as had been his experiences, he had done nothing else which afforded him a tithe of the satisfaction he felt now glowing in all his veins. Here, at last, by some curious and devious chance, he had stumbled upon the thing that was genuinely worth doing.
He could hear the cheerful girl in the next room, whistling gently to herself as she moved the furniture about. There came presently the sound of other female voices, and then a sustained, vibrant rattle, quaintly accentuated like the ticking of a telegraph key, which he grew accustomed to, and even found pleasant to the ear.
He put his feet up on the edge of the sofa—and nestled downward till his head was upon it as well. A delicate yet pervasive fragrance from the table close beside him aroused his languid curiosity. Was it the perfume of carnations or of roses?