The architect had to speak to the superintendent of the building, and Helen sat down on the stone balustrade of the terrace to wait for him. The painters were leaving their job, putting on their coats as they hurried from the house. They scarcely cast a glance her way as they passed out, disappearing into the road, fleeing from the luxurious abode and the silent woods, which were not theirs, to the village and the city. The girl mused idly about them and their lives, and about the other people who had come there this afternoon to look over the house, and about the house itself. She reflected how much more she liked the sketch Jackson had made of a little club-house for the Oak Hills Country Club. It was a rough little affair, the suggestion of which the architect had got from a kodak of a Sicilian farm-house he had once taken. But this great American château was so different from what she had supposed her lover would build, this caravansary for the rich, this toy where they could hide themselves in aristocratic seclusion and take their pleasures. And the thought stole into her mind that he liked it, this existence of the rich and prosperous, their sports and their luxuries,—and would want to earn with the work of his life just their pleasures, their housing, their automobiles and hunters. It was all strange to her experience, to her dreams!
From the second floor there came to her the sound of voices:—
"I tells you, Muster Hart, you got to rip the whoal damn piping out from roof to basement if you wants to have a good yob of it. I tole you that way back six weeks ago. It waren't specified right from the beginning."
"I'll speak to Rollings about it to-morrow and see what can be done."
"That's what you say every time, and he don't do nutting," the Swede growled.
"See here, Anderson! Who's running this job?" ...
The girl strolled away from the voices toward the bluff, where she could see the gray bosom of the lake. The twilight trees, the waveless lake soothed her: they were real, her world,—she felt them in her soul! The house back there, the men and women of it, were shadows on the marge.
"Nell!" her lover called.
"Coming, Francis."
When he came up to her she rested her head on his shoulder, looking at him with vague longing, desiring to keep him from something not clearly defined in her own mind. Her lover drew her to him and kissed her, once, twice, while her eyes searched his wistfully. She seemed passive and cold in his arms. But suddenly she closed her longing eyes, and her lips met his, hungrily, tensely, in the desire to adore, to love abundantly, which was her whole life.