Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/195



HE made no mention of this letter to Lily, but before she left the house late the same afternoon she went to Lily's room, a thing which she had never done before. She found her sister lying on the bed in her darkened room.

"What is it, Irene?"

Irene standing in the doorway, hesitated for an instant.

"Nothing," she said presently. "I just stopped to see if you were all right." Again there was a little pause. "You aren't afraid . . . alone here in the evenings, are you?"

Out of the darkness came the sound of Lily's laughter.

"Afraid? Lord, no! What is there to be afraid of? I'm all right." And Irene went away, down the long drive into Halsted street which lay in thick blackness because the strikers had cut the wires of the street lights.

On the same evening Lily had dinner on a lacquer table before the fire in the drawing-room. She ate languidly, leaning back in her rosewood armchair, dividing her attention between the food and the pages of Henri Bordeaux. Save for a chair or two and the great piano, the room was still in camphor, the furniture swathed in linen coverings, the Aubusson carpet rolled up in its corner. Dawdling between the food and the book, she managed to consume an hour and a half before she finished her coffee and cigarette. Despite the aspect of the room there was something pleasant about it, a certain indefinable warmth and sense of space which the library lacked utterly.

The business of the will was virtually settled. She had announced her intention of leaving within a day or two. Two of her bags were already packed. One of them she had not troubled herself to unpack because she had not the faintest need of clothes unless she wished to dress each night for her lonely dinner as if she expected a dozen guests. And being indolent, she preferred to lounge about comfortably in the black kimono