Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/98

 Anne restraining an inclination to drop a curtsy, and offering instead a limp and nervous hand.

She opened the door and stepping out onto her balcony, with its striped chairs and flower boxes, she faced the setting sun.

Somewhere out there the sun would be setting soon too. It would go down behind the mountains, leaving them first rose, then blue, and then gray. Like her life from now on.

But later on hope began to revive in her.

The dignified, almost ritualistic life of the household went on. In the morning her father's car came to the door, and he got in heavily and drove into the city. He kept almost as long hours as his clerks, but at four o'clock he went to his club, and there played bridge until six-thirty. Promptly at seven each day he came home, had a whisky and soda, and then went upstairs to dress for dinner. And at five minutes to eight he came heavily down the wide staircase, dinner suit, onyx studs and black tie carefully tied, and took the cocktail which James proffered him on an antique silver tray. Both tray and cocktail were, so to speak, hall-marked.

Sometimes they dined out. Then the only variation would be long tails instead of short, and pearl studs and white tie. And he would descend a few minutes earlier, and the car would be at the door. Or there was a dinner party. There would be a tray of tiny envelopes on the hall table, and after each gentleman had taken off his overcoat and top hat, he would take his envelope and look to see whom he was "taking in." And occasionally the information cheered him, but quite frequently it did not.

Sometimes some one fell out at the last moment, and Herbert filled in. Then he and Kay, as the only two young people, would be put together. They would make up talk.

"When are you going to open the town house?"

"Not while the weather is so good."

"You are looking very lovely tonight."

"Thanks, It's a new frock."

"I didn't mean the frock."

But that was as far as it went. She had a very definite idea that Herbert was marking time; that much as he