Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/78

66 "Go and sit down in the other room—where it 's cooler." And she knitted her brows over the recipe, determinedly oblivious of him, in an almost exaggerated pose of housewifely absorption in her work. He went to the door of the dining-room—a sunny, small room, done in what the decorators call "old gold," with yellow sill-curtains of Chinese silk on the windows, and a sere grass matting on the floor. "Twenty-five dollars a week!"

She said, from the cupboard: "And enough money in the bank to last us three years."

"Ach!" He left her—with her irritating complacency—and stalked through to the living-room, glancing in at a white bedroom as he passed. There was nothing anywhere to indicate the actress. Even the pictures on the walls were not of the stage. They were the usual reproductions of popular magazine prints—many of them what are technically known, to the producers of them, as "kissing pictures." He sniffed and turned his back on them, standing before the window, his hands in his pockets, his feet wide apart, in a thoughtful attitude.

He stood there until he saw his chauffeur and his auto appear from behind the plum thicket. Then he went to the door and called authoritatively: "Go on up the road and get yourself something to eat"—and came back to the dining-room with the face of determination.

"You 're acting," he said. "It 's all a pretense."

She was setting the table with dishes for two, and