She sat occupied with salad against the cavernous depths of a fireplace that, between the kitchen door and a built-in cupboard, filled the side of the dining room.  The long mantel above her head was ladened with the grey sheen of pewter, and two uncommonly large, fluted bowls of blue Stiegel glass.  In the centre of the table linen, the Sheffield and crystal and pictorial Staffordshire, was a vivid expanse of rose geraniums.  She broke off a flower and pinned it with the diamond bar on her breast.  “Howat,” she said, “to-morrow’s Saturday, and I’ve asked two people out until Sunday night.  Eliza Provost and a young man.  Do you mind?”

“Tell Rudolph,” he replied.  It was not until after dinner, when they were playing sniff, that he realized that she omitted the young man’s name.  He intended to ask it, but, his mind and hand hovering over an ivory domino, he forgot.  “Twenty,” he announced, reaching for the scoring pad.  “Oh, hell, Howat!” she protested.  “That’s the game, almost.”  She emptied her coffee cup, and speculatively fingered one of the thin cigars in the box at his hand.  “It’s the customary thing in Peru,” she observed, pinching the end from the cigar and lighting it.  He watched her absently, veiled in the fragrant, bluish smoke.  Automatically his thoughts returned to the women that, at a breath of scandal, had refused to attend the dinner to Patti.  So much changed; the years fled like birds in a mist.

“I feel like a politician,” she told him.  “Eliza Provost would pat me on the back.  She’s talking from a soap box on the street corners now, winging men for such trifles as forced birth.  I’m fond of Eliza; she’s got a splendid crust.  I wish you’d get excited about my rights; but your interest really goes no further than a hat from Camille Marchais.  You are deleterious, Howat.  Isn’t that a lovely word!  Which was the first double?” He blocked and won the game.  “Fifty-five,” she announced; “and ninety-five before.  I owe you a dollar and a half.”

She paid the debt promptly from a flexible gold mesh bag on the table; then stooped and wandered among his books.  Howat Penny turned to yesterday’s Evening Post, and Mariana settled beyond the lamp.  Outside the locusts were desperately shrill, and the heavy ticking of an old clock grew audible.  “I don’t like George Moore!” she exclaimed.  He raised surprised, inquiring eyebrows.  “He is such a taster,” she added, but particularized no more.  She sat, with the scarlet bound book clouded in the white chiffon of her lap, gazing at the wall.  Her lips were parted, and a brighter colour rose in her cheeks.  Her attitude, her expression, vaguely disturbed him; he had never seen her more warmly, dangerously, alive.  A new reluctance stopped the question forming in his mind; she seemed to have retreated from him.  “Moore is a very great artist,” he said instead.