So they swayed back and forth, these two. They were equals. They had never become rivals—before David.
Laura Duffield invited her new friend to dine.
“Come early,” she said, “I want you to meet my son, before he goes to his usual party.”
He entered the drawing-room: a young girl and a young man were there.
“Farge and Marcia, this is Mr. Rennard.”
Their polite greeting was sauced in an expectant languor and a very harmless resentment. It was as if they were resigned to a bad habit of their mother.
Marcia, looking at Tom’s trimly rhythmic body, thought: “It is lucky Mamma is getting a divorce and must behave.”
Farge was too dull to syllogize but he twinged with a sort of envy and almost pondered out: “My friends are not freakish enough for Ma.”
Tom was seated and Mrs. Duffield was already in full talk.
He found it hard, listening to her, to take in these two. As she talked, she insisted on holding his eyes. It was as if she talked for no greater purpose. Marcia and Farge sat on a lounge just outside his range. They were looking at him. Farge smoked a cigarette; he had offered none to Tom. Marcia leaned far back, her legs were outstretched straight; she threw one ankle over the other. Mrs. Duffield made good the deficiency of her son. She never smoked, but she had full provisions for her friends. Tom felt how from ankle to neck this girl was firm and spare and full of a voluptuous relaxation. Only her eyes were taut, perhaps from poising him. She did not listen to her mother’s words. She hummed a tune very faintly: her upward foot marked time.