Harsanyi tapped the tablecloth with the ends of his fingers. “But why did you never tell us? Why are you so reticent with us?”
Thea looked shyly at him from under her brows. “Well, it’s certainly not very interesting. It’s only a little church. I only do it for business reasons.”
“What do you mean? Don’t you like to sing? Don’t you sing well?”
“I like it well enough, but, of course, I don’t know anything about singing. I guess that’s why I never said anything about it. Anybody that’s got a voice can sing in a little church like that.”
Harsanyi laughed softly—a little scornfully, Thea thought. “So you have a voice, have you?”
Thea hesitated, looked intently at the candles and then at Harsanyi. “Yes,” she said firmly; “I have got some, anyway.”
“Good girl,” said Mrs. Harsanyi, nodding and smiling at Thea. “You must let us hear you sing after dinner.”
This remark seemingly closed the subject, and when the coffee was brought they began to talk of other things. Harsanyi asked Thea how she happened to know so much about the way in which freight trains are operated, and she tried to give him some idea of how the people in little desert towns live by the railway and order their lives by the coming and going of the trains. When they left the diningroom the children were sent to bed and Mrs. Harsanyi took Thea into the studio. She and her husband usually sat there in the evening.
Although their apartment seemed so elegant to Thea, it was small and cramped. The studio was the only spacious room. The Harsanyis were poor, and it was due to Mrs. Harsanyi’s good management that their lives, even in hard times, moved along with dignity and order. She had long ago found out that bills or debts of any kind frightened her husband and crippled his working power. He said they were like bars on the windows, and shut out the future; they meant that just so many hundred dollars’ worth of his life was debilitated and exhausted before he got to it. So Mrs. Harsanyi saw to it that they never owed anything. Harsanyi was not extravagant, though he was sometimes careless about money. Quiet and order and his wife’s good taste were the things that meant most to him. After these, good food, good cigars, a little good wine. He wore his clothes until they were shabby, until his wife had to ask the tailor to come to the house and measure him for new ones. His neckties she usually made herself, and when she was in shops she always kept her eye open for silks in very dull or pale shades, grays and olives, warm blacks and browns.
When they went into the studio Mrs. Harsanyi took up her embroidery and Thea sat down beside her on a low stool, her hands clasped about her knees. While his wife and his pupil talked, Harsanyi sank into a chaise longue in which he sometimes snatched a few moments’ rest between his lessons, and smoked. He sat well out of the circle of the lamplight, his feet to the fire. His feet were slender and well shaped, always elegantly shod. Much of the grace of his movements was due to the fact that his feet were almost as sure and flexible as his hands. He listened to the conversation with amusement. He admired his wife’s tact and kindness with crude young people; she taught them so much without seeming to be instructing. When the clock struck nine, Thea said she must be going home.