"Come on, Wenny," came Fanshaw's voice briskly.
They were splashing along towards the purple lacework of twigs of the Fenway trees. Fanshaw was talking unconcernedly about a Caravaggio the museum had bought that had turned out to be spurious. And there were the worn gold letters The Swansea sliding down the glass door and the oil smell of the elevator. O I must go away from here. Then Nan's oval face, her voice strangely caressing. Brainstorm, the comfortable word. Teacups clinking and the steam of the teapot and dusk very misty over the Fenway.
Why hadn't he gone away with Ellen, spoken to her, kissed her in front of Fanshaw. If she'd fallen in love with him it would have been up to the ears, the whole hog; those women were like that.
"You just missed Fitzie," Nan was saying. She had just poured herself out a cup of tea into which she shook meditatively a few drops of cream from the empty pitcher. "O she's such a scream... I don't know what I'd do without her. Now I know all the gossip and about the Summer Street murder case and everything... And do you remember the girl in the Fadettes we thought was the violinist at the Venice? Well, that wasn't the girl at all. Fitzie told me all about her... It seems she came back to try to get her job again and Mrs. Thing who runs it said of course it would be impossible. I don't see what her morals have to do with her playing, do you? And the poor girl's going to have a baby... Fitzie was so funny about it, said she thought it was terrible things like that should happen so soon... O what would I do without Fitzie?"
"But the fellow she went off with must be a scoundrel," said Fanshaw. "A man like that ought to be shot."
"She ought to have thought twice before she did it, that's all. It's not his fault particularly."
"And dry-rotted scraping out Light Cavalry for the Fadettes...." Wenny caught himself. No, he wasn't going to talk. Nan looked him full in the face for an instant. Her eyes were dark, dilated; he thought she was going to burst into tears.
"Such droll things have been going on at the Conservatoire." Nan, her face flushing, threw herself into a stream of talk. "Poor Isolda Jones is madly in love with Salinski and had hysterics during her violin lesson and there's a dreadful scandal about the last Symphony concert. It seems that..." She stopped talking. No one spoke. Fanshaw moved his spoon uneasily about in his saucer. "Wenny, have some more to eat," she said sharply and got to her feet and went to the window.
Wenny sat without moving, staring at her back dark and slender against the dusk.
"You must be dreadfully exhausted, Wenny," said Fanshaw in a low voice.