"And that lost everything?"
"Everything."
She walked before me into the living-room of the chalet, and I saw that she gripped her riding-whip very tightly in her hand. She looked about her for a moment, and then at me.
"It's comfortable," she remarked.
Our eyes met in a conversation very different from the one upon our lips. A sombre glow surrounded us, drew us together; an unwonted shyness kept us apart. She roused herself, after an instant's pause, to examine my furniture.
"You have chintz curtains. I thought men were too feckless to have curtains without a woman. But, of course, your aunt did that! And a couch and a brass fender, and—is that a pianola? That is your desk. I thought men's desks were always untidy, and covered with dust and tobacco ash."
She flitted to my colour prints and my little case of books. Then she went to the pianola. I watched her intently.
"Does this thing play?" she said.
"What?" I asked.
"Does this thing play?"
I roused myself from my preoccupation.
"Like a musical gorilla with fingers all of one length. And a sort of soul. . . . It's all the world of music to me."
"What do you play?"
"Beethoven, when I want to clear up my head while I'm working. He is—how one would always like to work. Sometimes Chopin and those others, but Beethoven. Beethoven mainly. Yes."
Silence again between us. She spoke with an effort.
