He was talked out of his mood. He was light-hearted and full of interest for a thousand things. It was a trifle after all.
So they played through the afternoon, they went arm in arm to dinner, they spent an hour in a terrace with liqueurs before them. They talked of her work and her triumphs and the quaint jealousies of artists. All this because it was his greatest pride. And several times Tom broke out in admiration of New York: in praise of her vast largesses. He was confident and proud. Cornelia smiled again—her angular, critical self....
Before her door he kissed her good-night.
“We’ve made a pretty good start, from Dahlton, Ohio, haven’t we, sister? Pretty good, pretty fair.”
She changed once more to the tender part of her nature: she ignored his mood.
“Good-night. And Tom—that country boy—bring him up some late afternoon?” Her eyes alone smiled. Tom startled, imperceptibly.
“Surely,” he hurried to say. “Surely ... if I see him.”
Nature cellared its profusion. The sap of life was sucked to the roots of things. As the year died, the house of the Deanes came to life.
Chests gave forth finery and color. Curtains were up, barring the archaic sun: dun colors were away from the florid chairs. The safe-vaults let go their silver plate and their gold, and from the hot-houses came flowers. Streets were chill, skies were mournful; in the narrow endless purlieus of the disinherited, of the nine-tenths, began the hunger for coal.... But it was summer in the City.