And at that Barry's face changed as if he had remembered something he would have been as glad to forget.
"Oh—I've been here a few days," he gave back vaguely.
She glanced about the shadowy room. "So alone?"
A wry smile touched his mouth. "I came for alone-ness. I had a play to write—I wanted to work some things out for myself," and indefinably but certainly Maria Angelina caught the impression that all the things he wanted to work out for himself in this solitude were not connected with his play.
His linked hands had slipped over his knees and he looked ahead of him very steadily into the fire, and Maria Angelina had a feeling that he looked that way into the fire many evenings, so oddly, grimly intent, with oblivious eyes and faintly ironic lips.
He was quiet so long, without moving, that she felt as if he had forgotten her. He did not look happy. . . . Something dark had touched him. . . .
"Is it something you want that you cannot get, Signor?" she asked him in a grave little voice.
He turned his eyes to her, and she saw there was smoldering fire beneath their surface brightness.
"No, Signorina, it is something that I want and that I can get."
"There is no difficulty there," she murmured.