The younger man looked at Olive. “Come with me,” he said abruptly. “I want to play to you.”
“I want to hear you,” she said as she rose from the table.
He followed her into the music-room and shut the door. “Well?”
She chose to misunderstand him. “It is charming. Just what a shrine of sound should be.”
The grand piano stood out from the grey-green background of the walls beyond, there was a bronze statuette of Orpheus with his lute on a twisted Byzantine column of white and gold mosaic, and a long cushioned divan set on one side broke the long lines of light on the polished floor.
“What are you going to play?” she asked.
“Nothing, at present,” he said, smiling at her. “I want to talk to you first. You are not frightened?”
“No.” She sat on the divan and he stood before her, looking down into her eyes.
“I think I had better try to tell you about my wife,” he said. “May I sit here? And may I smoke?”
“Yes.” She drew her skirts aside to make room for him next to her. “I want to hear you,” she said again.