The large room had not greatly altered in appearance since Rachel and Hagar first arranged it, three years ago. There were more books, a few more prints, more signed photographs, a somewhat richer tone of time. It was a good room, quiet and fine, not lacking an air of nobility. A great bough of red autumn leaves flamed at one end like a stained-glass window. A door opening into a small room showed a typewriter and a desk piled with work. The two visitors, with fifteen minutes of sole possession before them, strolled to the windows and admired the far-flung, grandiose view, twilight beginning to be starred with the city lights; then turned back to the room and its strong charm.
"We've lived through the revolution, I think," said John Fay. "The senses move more slowly than the event. We're just taking it in, and we call it all to make. But it's really made."
"I see what you mean. But they—but we—have all this monstrous amount of hard work yet—"
"Yes. Introducing the revolution to the slow-minded. But I gather it's being done." He moved about the room, looking at the photographs. "Artists and thinkers and world-builders, men and women.... Those years down there around the Equator, I could at least take the magazines, and I got each twelvemonth a box of books. I know all these people. I used to feel quite intimate with them, down there building bridges.... Building bridges is great work. I believe in it thoroughly and quite enjoy doing it.... And these are bridge-builders, too, and I had a fraternal feeling. I've cut their pictures, men and women, from the magazines and stuck them up in my hut and said good-morning and good-evening to them." He had the pleasantest, humorous eyes, and now they twinkled. "Sometimes I like them so well that I really kow-towed to them. And I've laid a platonic sprig of flowers before more than one of these women's pictures. Perhaps I'd better not tell her so, but there was a picture of Hagar Ashendyne—"
The door opened and Hagar entered. She wore the wood-brown dress of yesterday—she was somewhat pale, with circles under her eyes. "Ah, I am sorry!" she said, "but I could not help it. The strike ... and they send the girls to the Island. Two or three of us went to the court—oh, the snaky, blind thing we call Justice!" Her eyes filled. "Pardon! but if you had been there—" She caught herself up, dashed the moisture from her eyes and said—and looked—that she was glad to see them. "We'll put the things away that make your heart ache! I'll go and change, and we'll eat our dinner and have a pleasant, pleasant time!"
In a very little while she was back, dressed in white, amethysts in an old and curious setting about her throat. They had been Maria's, and to-night she looked like Maria, lines of the haunted mind about her mouth and between her eyes. Only it was not her personal fate that troubled her, but a wider haunting. At dinner, in the café at the corner table, she told them, when they asked her, a little of where she had been and what she had done during the day, told them of this pitiful case and of that. Then after a moment's silence she said resolutely, "Don't let us talk about these things any more. Let us talk about happy things. Talk to me about yourself, Lily!"
"There isn't much to tell," said Lily; "I've been quite terribly sheltered. For years I was ill, and then I grew better. I've travelled a little, and I like Maeterlinck and Vedanta and Bergson, and I play the violin not so badly, and Robert, my husband, is very good to me. I haven't grown much, I am afraid, since I was at Eglantine. But more and more continually I want to grow. Do you remember, at Eglantine—"
Dinner was not long. They came down to the grave and fair room with the scarlet autumn leaves and the books, and here Mary Magazine gave them coffee. They sat in their deep chairs and drank it slowly. The talk dropped; they sat in a thoughtful mood. John Fay had a long and easy figure, a bronzed, clean-shaven, humorous face and sea-blue eyes. Lily was slender as a willow wand, with colourless, strong features. Her eyes were dreamy—Hagar remembered how she sat and looked into the fire when they read poetry. Like the faintest, faraway strain of a music not altogether welcome, a line went through her mind,—