He dropped her hand quickly, stepped back into the car.
The next three days she spent buying high-backed cathedral chairs and carved tables and tabourets for her living-room. Down came the cretonne hangings and up went heavy purple velvet ones that shut out the blessed light of day. She selected a black rug that made the room look hideously somber and for the divan, gold cushions weighted with tassels. When she finished, she had consumed several months’ salary. But the transformation was complete. Once more Elizabeth Parsons was wiped off this mortal sphere. Soon no shadow would be left of her, not even in the sacred nook she had saved to call “home.”
With an anxiety close to terror she waited for Hubert Randolph. She was wearing white, soft, creamy, floating. There ought, at least, be some spot of light in the mysteriously shadowed room.
He came at seven. She went to the door herself and let him into the little foyer. His eyes were alight with [46] ]eagerness. They had the look of a small boy’s bound for a fishing trip on Sunday.
He caught her hand. “You know how glad I am to be here.”
“You know,” she rejoined to her own surprise, “how I am glad—for you to be here.”
He followed into the living-room. “Odd,” he observed almost to himself, “I’ve pictured it often—but not like this. I’d an idea of light things—woman things about you.”
She could have laughed with sardonic glee at the thought of how she had dragged down those light, woman things and spent a small fortune to create another atmosphere.
“But on the whole,” he proceeded speculatively, “these are you, aren’t they?”
“A woman is so man-y things—so man-y moods, I wish to say—that there is no one room can express her.”