Behind palms an orchestra clashed out the latest Blues and in the cleared space couples were speeding up and down to the syncopations, while between tables agile waiters balanced overloaded trays or whisked silver covers off scarlet lobsters or lit mysterious little lights below tiny bubbling caldrons.
Maria Angelina's soft lips were parted with excitement and her dark eyes round with wondering. This, indeed, was a new world. . . .
It was gay—gayer than the Hotel Excelsior at Rome! It was a carnival of a dinner!
Ever since morning, when the cordiality of the new-found cousins had dissipated the first forlorn homesickness of arrival, she had been looking on at scenes that were like a film, ceaselessly unrolling.
After luncheon, Cousin Jim with impulsive hospitality had carried her off to see the Big Town—an expedition from which his wife relievedly withdrew—and he had whirled Maria Angelina about in motors, plunged her into roaring subways, whisked her up dizzying elevators and brought her out upon unbelievable heights, all the time expounding and explaining with that passionate, possessive pride of the New Yorker by adoption, which left his young guest with the impression that he owned at least half the city and was personally responsible for the other half.
It had been very wonderful but Maria had expected New York to be wonderful. And she was not interested, save superficially, in cities. Life was the stuff her dreams were made on, and life was unfolding vividly to her eager eyes at this gay dinner, promising her enchanted senses the incredible richness and excitement for which she had come.
And though she sat up very sedately, like a well-behaved child in the midst of blazing carnival, her glowing face, her breathless lips and wide, shining eyes revealed her innocent ardors and young expectancies.
She was very proud of herself, in the midst of all the prideful splendor, proud of her new, absurdly big white hat, of her new, absurdly small white shoes, and of her new, white mull frock, soft and clinging and exquisite with the patient embroidery of the needlewoman.
Its low cut neck left her throat bare and about her throat hung the string of white coral that her father had given her in parting—white coral, with a pale, pale pink suffusing it.
"Like a young girl's dreams," Santonini had said. "Snowy white—with a blush stealing over them."