His hand was warm and moist and strong....
XXXVII
Harry Lontaine got home at a late hour for one who had it in mind to bathe, dress, and put in appearance for an eight o'clock dinner several miles away. So was the tempo of his gait unhurried as he left the blue-and-white car waiting at the curb and passed up the straight-ruled sidewalk of cement between the tutelary orange trees of the bungalow he rented furnished. And on its miniature veranda he delayed for several minutes, motionless, with his face lifted thoughtfully, even a shade wistfully to the sky in which the afterglow of sunset pulsed like dreams of youth reviewed across the desert years of middle-age....
Other than this shy colour of regret, however, nothing of the trend of his thoughts, nothing of their nature, escaped the eyes, steel-blue and dense, in that lean, hard mould of features, never more self-contained, never more British than in this moment.
And presently he roused, but without change of countenance, and went on into the combination living and dining-room to which the best part of the dwelling was given over.
Here, where the dusk held close and still, Lontaine, when he had made a light, wasted no more time than was required for a stop at the buffet to treat himself to a considerably stiffer drink of pseudo-Scotch than the law allowed, or—seeing that the law allowed none at all—his superficial necessities seemed to call for.
Before the door which gave upon the more private quarters of the house, however, he hung for some time in seeming reluctance to proceed, a suspicion of strained attentiveness in his deliberation. From beyond came never a sound. Eventually he pushed the door open.
Immediately he saw Fanny. Bathed in a great glare, she sat in her dressing-room facing a long mirror of three panels; decked out en grande toilette, wearing every jewel she possessed, groomed to the finest nuance of perfection; a brilliant and strangely immobile figurine of modern femininity, with bobbed hair like burnished brass, milk-white bosom and arms rising out of a calyx of peach-blow taffeta, jewels stung to iridescent life by that fierce wash of light.
As if hypnotized by so much bright loveliness, she continued steadfastly to gaze upon her reflected self; even when she heard Lontaine at the door and the mirror placed him behind her in the doorway, she did not move by so much as a trembling eyelash. Only when he spoke, her lips parted in answer, though still she neither turned nor ceased to contemplate the vision in the glass; as if this last were something precious but tricksy, something that might incontinently vanish forever from her ken did she but for a single instant turn her eyes away.