Page:Peter Whiffle (1922).djvu/92

 Peter, in violet and grey striped pyjamas and Japanese straw sandals with purple velvet straps across his toes.

Van Vechten! he cried. It's you! We've been home all day. Clara's been singing.

So the voice was Clara's. She sat, indeed, on the long piano bench—the piano was an acquisition since my last visit—, also slightly clad. She was wearing, to be exact, a crepe de chine night-dress. Her feet were bare and her hair was loose but, as the day was cool, she had thrown across her shoulders a black Manila shawl, embroidered with huge flowers of Chinese vermilion and magenta.

How are you, Mr. Van Vechten? she asked, extending her hand. I'll get some tea. Her manner, I noted, was more ingratiating than it had been the day we met at Martha's.

Nothing whatever was said about the situation, if there was a situation. For my part, I may say that I was entirely unaccustomed to walking into an apartment at five o'clock in the afternoon and discovering the host in pyjamas, conversing intimately with a lightly-clad lady, who, a week earlier, I had every reason to believe, had been only a casual acquaintance. The room, too, had been altered. The piano, a Pleyel baby grand, occupied a space near the window and George Moore was sitting on it, finding it an excellent point of vantage from which to scan the happenings in the outside world. Naturally his back was turned and he did not get up, taking his air