A tender fog caressed their faces as they set off up misty Fifth Avenue, she in double time to his light straight pace. Ten o'clock motors passed scantily, tires in sibilant moist communication with the glistening black asphalt.
I hardly know him and he didn't invite me, she thought, but it's as though we've been walking since that time in Central Park. She longed to take his arm and slow him down but didn't dare.
"I love New York best when it's like this. It's soothing and exciting at the same time." You had to begin somewhere.
"It is," he agreed, thinking the mist not unlike that of Paris. She would enjoy Paris, be appropriate to its soft nights.
"I'm going to get me walking shoes in case I walk with you again," she hinted.
"I'm sorry," he said, slowing down.
"That's all right," she assured in case he was annoyed. "I hope you don't mind my coming along but I couldn't stay with Figente the mood I was in. He always cheered me up but he has changed. Or I have."
It struck him her voice was melancholy and without its lightsome ring, related somehow to the change he had noticed at Figente's; a nebulous transformation from girl to woman, as subtle as an almost finished painting awaiting the stroke of completion. A flowering bud.
"Yes, Figente does seem low. Perhaps it's the illness."
"I don't think that's all of it. I think he's worried sick about Hal. He has lavished so much on that boy. He wants him to be a success at the concert but if he is, he's afraid Hal will leave him. Those boys are fickle."
"Oh, fickleness isn't limited to one group," he said, ill at ease at her reference to homosexuality; though why, he couldn't imagine, physical vagaries being no mystery to her, he thought, remembering Simone's remark concerning her. It was only the night mist gleaming on her face that veiled it with innocence.
"Figente is really an old softy," she said laughing.
"Remy de Gourmont said that behind almost even' egotistic high-living old bachelor hides a weeping sentimentalist," he said.
She regretted having put off reading the French author Vida had spoken about so she could say something besides "He doesn't have to worry about the boys' part in the recital. Hal has trained the quartet just fine. They are wonderful to rehearse with and the only ones who don't lose their tempers, including me."
