"I had no idea—" returned Carlita, in an uncertain and indefinite sort of way, as if she didn't quite know what she wanted to say. "May I come in for a moment?"
"As well come in and close the door as stand there and have the draught blow on one," answered Jessica. "It has been a very stupid evening," stifling a yawn. "Calve was not in voice, and Jean de Reske didn't sing at all. It seems to me abominably like a swindle to announce at the last moment that some one whom you especially went to hear 'has a cold, and So-and-so has kindly consented to take his place.' Even the poker game afterward was stupid—insufferably stupid. Carlita, what a fool you are, that you don't cut all the Puritan idiocy of your bringing up, and try the gaits with me! You'd have twice the friends, live twice as long, and have a thousand times the fun."
Carlita shivered slightly, as her eyes traveled over the figure before her.
"I suppose you are right," she said, half stupidly; "but somehow it doesn't seem to be in my line."
"Pouf! You can do anything you like. What's the good of making a sepulcher of one's life—of living for death, so to speak—when you have so little of life and so much of death? You make a constant sermon of yourself, and people hate sermons. That's why they go to sleep in church. You never see any one go to sleep at a poker-table. There are people who talk against it, I know—'wouldn't have their sisters play for their right arms,' and all that rot—and then turn round and kill their best friend!"
She laughed shortly, heavily, hatefully, and again Carlita shivered, while she moved uneasily.
"It is inconsistent," she said, in a stony sort of way; "but so few people are consistent. I wanted to ask you about—him. You know—the man whom—"
"Leith Pierrepont?"
"Yes."