Meanwhile Margery had followed him into the inner hall, closed the door, and put up the chain. She now came past him and pushed aside the portières into the dining room.
"Bring it this way, please," she said, quite politely.
He carried the ladder through the blue dining room into a kitchenette, and thence through a door which Margery held open on to a narrow back porch, from which he had a glimpse of a sort of orderly labyrinth of steep wooden stairs and narrow back porches around the four sides of an inner court.
He returned into the kitchenette, which was almost entirely filled up with a gas stove. Margery shut the door.
"Go into the sitting room and talk to Jen," she said. "I want her to forget about Simpson. I'll change the bed for you."
"Thank you," said Merriam, who began to perceive that Miss Milton, in spite of her profanity, had certain admirable qualities.
He went through the dining room, hesitated for a moment before the portières--he could not have said why--and then pushed them open.
Jennie had risen and was standing beside a table between the windows. The table held a parchment-shaded lamp, a newspaper, a small camera, and a bowl of violets. Merriam had not noticed the flowers before. He remembered the violets worn by the floor clerk at the hotel, and wondered whether George Norman had saved himself trouble at the florist's by ordering two bunches from the same lot, to be sent to different addresses.
Jennie was looking down at the flowers. She must have been aware of his presence. If so, she was apparently content that he should have the benefit of a good look at her trim figure and at her face in profile, which was its best view. She had a pretty nose; the artificially heightened colour of her cheeks was charming in this light; and the bright knob of her fair hair over her ear was a most alluring ornament.
In a moment she bent gracefully down to smell the violets. As she straightened up she turned to look at him--a serious, appraising look that was somehow intimate. Then she smiled brightly.