“Fate, isn’t it?” she said; and, for once, their rôles were reversed—the man studying her as she went into a revery, her lips a little drawn, looking far down the long-storied lanes of the tapestry.
“That’s what it all is,” he said, watching her with more curiosity than he had shown—“whether you turn to the left or the right at a certain moment. ‘Life is a jest, and all things show it.’ Why, Inga, if a gust of wind hadn’t blown my hat off at the right—” he corrected himself—“no, the wrong moment, would I be here? A gust of wind—and that’s the cause, the real cause of it all. How ridiculous!”
Then all at once, after they had completed their task and the studio stood about them clothed in dark greens and mellow golden rugs, with rich notes of carved furniture and glowing copper in subduing shadows, and great Spanish jars in streaked gray and green in massive restfulness, he became quite furious, as though suddenly realizing what her patience had accomplished.
“You made me do it, and I didn’t want to! You made me!” he said, crossing his arms and looking so moodily ferocious that she began to smile. He continued to scowl at her without answering her mood. “Lots of good it will do,” he said curtly, with a dark look.
“It kills time,” she said quietly.
“Well, yes; anything for that. Thank God for anything that will do that,” he admitted. “But as for anything else—” and he began to laugh in a low tone to himself at something that had struck his imagination. “All right, then, suppose we have tea here.”
“That would be nice.”
“Ask the others in,” he said restlessly.
She looked up, genuinely surprised, wondering if she had understood him.
“The men next door?”