Margaret Adams was in her private sitting room in her own home, an old-fashioned red brick house near Washington Square. She had been writing letters for more than an hour and had just seated herself in a big chair and closed her eyes. She looked very young and tiny at this instant to be such a great lady. Her silk morning dress was only a shade lighter than the rose-colored chair.
Suddenly ten fingers were lightly laid over her eyes.
“Guess who I am or I shall never release you,” a rich, soft voice demanded, and Margaret Adams drew the fingers down and kissed them.
“Silly Polly, as if it could be any one else? What ever made you come out in this rain, child? You had a cold, anyway, and it is a perfectly beastly day.”
Instead of replying, Polly sat down in front of a small, open fire, putting her toes up on the fender.
“You are a hospitable lady,” she remarked finally, “but I am not wet specially. I left my damp things down stairs so as not to bring them into this pretty room. It always makes me think of the rose lining to a cloud; one could never have the blues in here.”
The room was charming. The walls were delicately pink, almost flesh color, with a deeper pink border above. A few original paintings were hung in a low line—one of an orchard with apple trees in spring bloom. The mantel was of white Italian marble with a bust of Dante’s Beatrice upon it and this morning it also held a vase of roses. Over near the window a desk of inlaid mahogany was littered with letters, papers, writing materials and photographs. On a table opposite the newest magazines and books were carefully arranged, together with a framed photograph of Polly and Margaret Adams’ taken when they were in London several years before. There was also a photograph of Richard Hunt and several others of distinguished men and women who were devoted friends of the famous actress.
A big, rose-colored divan was piled with a number of silk and velvet cushions of pale green and rose. Then there were other odd chairs and tables and shaded lamps and curtains of rose-colored damask hung over white net. But the room was neither too beautiful nor fanciful to be homelike and comfortable. Two or three ugly things Margaret Adams still kept near her for old associations’ sake and these alone, Polly insisted, made it possible for her to come into this room. For she, too, was an ugly thing, allowed to stay there now and then because of past association.
Polly was not looking particularly well today. She had been acting for ten days in A Woman’s Wit, though that would scarcely explain her heavy eyelids, nor her colorless cheeks. Polly’s eyes were so big in her white face and her hair so black that actually she looked more like an Irish pixie than an ordinary every-day girl.
“You’ll stay to lunch with me, Polly, and I’ll send you home in my motor,” Margaret Adams announced authoritatively. “I suppose your mother and Mollie have gone back to Woodford? I know Betty has returned to Boston, she came in to say good-by and to tell me that she is spending the winter in Boston with her brother, Dr. Ashton, and his wife. Betty is really prettier than ever, don’t you think so? I believe it was you, Polly, who really saved Betty from marrying her German princeling, but what will the child do now without you to look after her?”