There was no fire in the deep, black grate. The windows above the broad seats in the gable inglenooks were wide open. The view and the old grand piano that stood crosswise in the room compensated for all other lacks. Ames was visibly embarrassed at her unannounced descent upon his quarters. He sat at a large, plain table drawn up before the south light, coatless, collarless, his hair ruffled into a crest, and ashes everywhere within his arm’s-length radius. Upon one corner of the table there dozed a large yellow tomcat, palpably a nomad.
“I hope I have not come too soon?” she asked hesitantly.
He swept a pile of magazines and papers from a chair for her, but she chose the high window-seat.
“It isn’t that, only I meant to set the stage for you,” he said ruefully. “I wouldn’t have had you find me like this for anything. When Ptolemy and I are alone here working, we just run a bachelor shop, and forget there are any other beings in the world.”
“Make it a dress rehearsal, then. I like it up here very much.” She looked out at the Square, the vivid autumn foliage accentuating the red and gold of the foliage and the vari-colored dresses of the Italian children playing there. It looked like some reckless, impressionistic painting, worked out merely in effective, daring splashes of color laid on with a palette knife. From the windows of Maria’s chosen abode uptown, one gazed down upon an indefinite row of closed, chill, characterless dwellings, with no gleam of color from street to street.
“I would like to live down here too,” she said thoughtfully. “It is very different from anything I have seen in New York before.”
Ames watched her with eager appreciation. Her glossy, luxuriant hair waved back from her low forehead into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. Her face held the elusive appeal of La Cigale’s. The memory of the old painting occurred to him with its appealing beauty and he felt a sudden protective tenderness towards this waif of summer’s idleness.
“It is lonely; that’s the only thing about it,” he said, coming near her. “If it wasn’t for Dmitri and the Phelpses I’d throw up the game sometimes and go West to the smelter.”
“The smelter; what is that?” she asked curiously.
“Where they separate the ore from the quartz, you know, the real from the slag.”