It would have been small wonder if Sylvia had felt suddenly cold as she crossed that threshold. Certainly she seemed a little strange as she stood with her back to Harboro and aimlessly took in the capacious bed and the few other simple articles.
“The guest-chamber?” she echoed presently, turning toward him.
“We’ll have guests occasionally—after a while. Friends of yours from San Antonio, perhaps, or fellows I’ve known all the way from here to the City. We shouldn’t want them to go to a hotel, should we? I mean, if they were people we really cared for?”
“I hadn’t thought,” she answered.
She went to the window and looked out; but the gray sands, pallid under the night sky, did not afford a soothing picture. She turned to Harboro almost as if she were a stranger to him. “Have you many friends?” she asked.
“Oh, no!—not enough to get in my way, you know. I’ve never had much of a chance for friendships—not for a good many years. But I ought to have a better chance now. I’ve thought you’d be able to help me in that way.”
She did not linger in the room, and Harboro got the idea that she did not like to think of their sharing their home with outsiders. He understood that, too. “Of course we’re going to be by ourselves for a long time to come. There shall not be any guests until you feel you’d like to have them.” Then, as her eyes still harbored a shadow, he exclaimed gaily: “We’ll pretend that we haven’t any guest-chamber at all!” And taking a bunch of keys from his pocket he locked the door with a decisive movement.
On the way down the hall they passed their bedroom. “This room you’ve seen,” he said, “our room. But you have not seen the balcony yet.”
He was plainly confident that the balcony would make a pleasant impression upon her. He opened yet another door, and they stepped out under the night sky.
The thing had been planned with certain poetic or romantic values in mind. Standing on the balcony you were looking toward the Rio Grande—and Mexico. And you seemed pretty high. There was the dull silver of the river, and the line of lights along the bridge, and beyond the huddled, dark structures of Piedras Negras. You might have imagined yourself on the deck of a Mediterranean steamer, looking at a town in Algeria or Tunis. And beyond, under the low-hanging stars, was the Mexican desert—a blank page, with only here and there the obscurity of a garden, or a hacienda, or a mere speck which would be a lonely casa built of earth.