Bruce lent polite attention to Mills’s comments on the other portraits, one representing his maternal grandfather and another a great-uncle who had been killed in the Civil War. When they reached the lower floor Mills opened the door of a reception room and turned on the frame lights about a full-length portrait of a lady in evening dress.
“That is Mrs. Mills,” he said, “and an excellent likeness.”
He spoke in sophisticated terms of American portraiture as they went to the hall where the servant was waiting with Bruce’s hat and coat. A limousine was in the porte-cochère, and Mills stood on the steps until Bruce got in.
“I thank you very much, Mr. Mills,” Bruce said, taking the hand Mills extended.
“Oh, I owe you the thanks! I hope to see you again very soon!”
Mills on his way to his room found himself clinging to the stair rail. When he had closed the door he drew his hand slowly across his eyes. He had spoken with Marian Storrs’s son and the young man by an irony of nature had the countenance, the high-bred air of Franklin Mills III. It was astounding, this skipping for a generation of a type! It seemed to Mills, after he had turned off the lights, that his father’s eyes—the eyes of young Storrs—were still fixed upon him with a disconcerting gravity.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I
In the fortnight following his encounter with Mills at the Hardens’, and the later meeting that same night in the storm, Bruce had thrown himself with fierce determination into his work. There must be no repetitions of such meetings; they added to his self-consciousness, made him ill at ease even when walking the streets in which at a turn of any corner he might run into Mills.
He had never known that he had a nerve in his body, but now he was aware of disturbing sensations, inability to concentrate on his work, even a tremor of the hands as he bent over his drawing-board. His abrupt change from the open road to an office in some measure accounted for this and he began going to a public golf links on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and against the coming of winter he had his name proposed for membership in an athletic club.