A large, highly coloured and over-glossy man, passing under their box during a dancing intermission, bowed rather extravagantly to Jim. He recognised Angelo Puma, with contemptuous amusement at his impudence.
It was evident, too, that Puma was quite ready to linger if encouraged––anxious, in fact, to extend his hand.
But his impudence had already ceased to amuse Jim, and he said carelessly to Marya, in a voice perfectly audible to Puma:
“There goes a man who, in collusion with a squinting partner of his, once beat me out of a commission.”
Puma’s heavy, burning face turned abruptly from Marya, whom he had been looking at; and he continued on across the floor. And Jim forgot him.
They remained until the place closed. Then he took her home.
It was an apartment overlooking the park from Fifty-ninth Street––a big studio and apparently many comfortable rooms––a large, still place where no servants were in evidence and where thick velvety carpets from Ushak and Sultanabad muffled every footfall.
She had insisted on his entering for a moment. He stood looking about him in the great studio, where 260 Vanya’s concert-grand loomed up, a sprawling, shadowy shape under the dim drop-light which once had been a mosque-lamp in Samarcand.