“This wood does snap so!” she murmured.

The rug was a beautiful old Persian carpet of roses and urns.

“Did you understand what I said, Mama?”

“Yes, dear; that Mr. Wayne was going to China in two weeks and wanted you to go, too.  Was it just a politesse, or does he actually imagine that you could?”

“He thinks I can.”

Mrs. Farron laughed good-temperedly.

“Did you go and see about having your pink silk shortened?” she said.

Mathilde stared at her mother, and in the momentary silence Lucie came in and asked what madame wanted for the evening, and Adelaide in her fluent French began explaining that what she really desired most was that Lucie should not make so much noise in her room that monsieur could not sleep.  In the midst of it she stopped and turned to her daughter.

“Won’t you be late for dinner, darling?” she said.

Mathilde thought it very possible, and went away to get dressed.  She went into her own room and shut the door sharply behind her.

All the time she was dressing she tried to rehearse her case—­that it was her life, her love, her chance; but all the time she had a sickening sense that a lifted eye-brow of her mother’s would make it sound childish and absurd even in her own ears.  She had counted on a long evening, but when she went down-stairs she found three or four friends of her mother’s were to dine and go to the theater.  The dinner was amusing, the talk, though avowedly hampered by the presence of Mathilde, was witty and unexpected enough; but Mathilde was not amused by it, for she particularly dreaded her mother in such a mood of ruthless gaiety.  At the theater they were extremely critical, and though they missed almost the whole first act, appeared, in the entr’acte, to feel no hesitation in condemning it.  They spoke of French and Italian actors by name, laughed heartily over the playwright’s conception of social usages, and made Mathilde feel as if her own unacknowledged enjoyment of the play was the guiltiest of secrets.

As they drove home, she was again alone with her mother, and she said at once the sentence she had determined on: 

“I don’t think you understood, Mama, how seriously I meant what I said this afternoon.”

Mrs. Farron was bending her long-waisted figure forward to get a good look at a picture which, small, lonely, and brightly lighted, hung in a picture-dealer’s window.  It was a picture of an empty room.  Hot summer sunlight filtered through the lowered Venetian blinds, and fell in bands on the golden wood of the floor.  Outside the air was burned and dusty, but inside the room all was clear, cool, and pure.

“How perfect his things are,” murmured Mrs. Farron to herself, and then added to her daughter:  “Yes, my dear, I did take in what you said.  You really think you are in love with this Wayne boy, don’t you?  It’s immensely to your credit, darling,” she went on, her tone taking on a flattering sweetness, “to care so much about any one who has such funny, stubby little hands—­most unattractive hands,” she added almost dreamily.