She read my dazed approval in a glance and laid down her pen, and, with one experienced coup d’œil over the manuscript before her, leaned back, clasping the edge of her desk with both hands and staring at me. She was wearing one of those black evening gowns, and a feather fan was in easy reach of where she sat; and I noticed all at once that the string of pearls was dangling from the gas-jet above her head.
“The new fixtures—the electric ones—will be bronze,” she hastened to say.
I shall never forget, not to my dying day, the sight I had of her sitting there; in that room, at that desk, in a black evening gown—writing! And the string of pearls she had slung across the condemned gas-jet by way of subtle disarmament for her task! The whole place had the hushed grand air of having been cleared for action by some sophisticated gesture; as if—the thought whimsically struck me—she might have just rung for the “second man” and bidden him remove “all the Pomeranians” lest they distract her.
“It’s too lovely, Miss Haviland; I can’t tell you what I think it is,” I exclaimed, blankly.
She stood up, reached for the rope of pearls, and slipped them over her head.
“I want you to see the hall,” she said. “Isn’t it chic?... And the bedrooms. The men will leave their hats in the south chamber—my room—in here; and the women will have the other—this one.”
She preceded me. She was quite simple in her eagerness to point out everything she had done. Her childlike glee in it touched me. And she looked so tired. She looked, in spite of her pomp and enthusiasm, exhausted.
“How he—how Mr. Hurrell Oaks will love it,” I cried, sincerely. “If he only realized, if he only could know the pains you’ve taken for him.”
“Pains?”
She leaned forward and let me judge for myself how she felt. Her eyes glowed. I had never seen her with all the barriers down.