Diego looked at her stupidly.
“Tell him that my voice is gone!”
Diego still stared, unable to bring himself to speak. Both men were unhappy but Fay Palmas was not unhappy, in spite of her tragic attitude. She had an audience. The exhilaration of throwing off old bonds gave her a sense of power. . . . She swept away from them, then turned and faced them, and raised her arm in a dramatic gesture. She began to sing:
“Way down upon de Swanee River—
Far, far away,
Dere’s where my heart am turning ever—
Dere’s where de old folks stay. . . .”
Her voice swung, in a strong plangent swing:
“All de world am sad and dreary,
Eberywhere I roam,
Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary”
The sweet notes grew husky, faltered, broke. She stared fixedly at Bond. There was a moment’s dead silence. Then, pursing her relaxed lips, she finished the last bars in a limpid whistle.
Diego slanted his head towards Bond. He had an expression of childlike pride.
“She always does that,” he said. “Her voice goes—then she finishes in a whistle. It’s funny. She never lets it just die down. She always finishes in a whistle.”
Bond searched his mind for something to say, in praise, in comfort, he knew not what. But he could find nothing. He pulled at his lip. He had a vision of her, standing on a platform, the world at her feet.
“I think if she could get away from this place,” said Diego, “her voice would soon come back to her.” He looked calculatingly at Bond.
Fay Palmas gave a short laugh. She was suddenly quite calm, though flushed. She went to the bookshelves and took out a book.
“Now here’s another,” she said, carrying it to Bond, “that must be pretty old. What do you think?”
He accepted it with great relief. The singing, her emotion, had been a strain on him. He examined the dog-eared copy of Huckleberry Finn. “This looks more promising. It may be worth something. May I take it and shew it to a fellow I know who buys old books?” He had no hope of it, but he wanted to say something to comfort her.
She went and threw up a window. “How hot it is in here. I feel as though I should suffocate!”
“Now that’s not good for your voice, you know,” said Bond. “That air is frosty.”
“I don’t care,” she said indifferently. “It doesn’t matter about my voice.”
Again the two men stared at her in discomfort. Frosty air, smelling of the sea, swept like a wave into the room. Diego shivered and drew one of the sofa cushions on top of him. Instantly Fay Palmas closed the window.
“I wish,” she said, “that Josie would come down and make us some coffee. No one can make coffee like she can. Whatever she does in her room for hours at a time I can’t imagine.”
“Let her have a little peace, can’t you?” said Diego. He was thinking that Josie might be working on his picture.
Bond thought his tone was rude. He threw him an angry glance. Fay went to the foot of the stairs and called loudly:
“Josie! Josie! Come down and make us some coffee. Purley thinks you’re very queer to go off like that.”
But Josie took her own time. Every now and again Fay Palmas looked impatiently toward the stairway. She wanted the coffee so badly she could think of nothing else. She could not talk. She looked almost stupidly at the two men as though she wondered what they could find to say. At last Diego rolled himself in one supple movement to his feet. “I’ll go and get her,” he said. As he passed behind his mother’s chair he stroked the back of her neck with his hand. She caught at it, wanting to press it against her neck, but he was gone.
Bond looked after him, trying to imagine what it had been like to touch the brown rounded neck, to have laid his hand for an instant just beneath the dark hair that sprung, strong and yet fine, and was coiled firmly in an unfashionable way that became her. He wished that Diego had not left them. It was too disturbing, too strange, to be left alone with her. His heart began to pound uncomfortably. He wished that he could see her as she was, clarify his romantic conception of her, but no—everything about her was strange and beautiful to him. He could no more see her reasonably than he could control the beating of his heart.
She was looking at him, a little puzzled. She said:
“It’s good of you to try and help me, Purley.”
“I wish I could help you.”
“Why, you do! You certainly do! Coming here to-night. And giving me good advice.”
“Advice! As though you’d take my advice!”
“But I will!” She hooked her arm over the back of her chair and bent her head toward him almost meekly.
“Then I advise you to wait for a better offer for the business.”
“I’ve promised Diego to accept this.”
“I see. . . . Well—I’ll miss you.”
“You’re the only person in this hateful town I mind leaving.”
“Then—why leave me?”
She knit her brows, trying to make him out.
“You might marry me.” His voice came from his pounding heart—rather thick and husky.
“You’re not in earnest!”
“I’m in dead earnest.”
“Oh, I couldn’t think of that—just yet!”
“But you’ll think about it—after a little?”
“Oh—I don’t know. . . . You’ve given me a mighty big surprise.” She had gone pale.
“I’d no intention of asking you to-night. I suppose it’s too soon to be decent.”
“It isn’t that. . . . It’s only that I want to feel free for a spell . . . I sort of want to spread my wings.”
“I’ll miss you terribly.”
“Oh, Purley, you are kind!” She put her hand on his. Perhaps it was the coldness of his that made hers feel so feverishly hot.
He sat rigid, looking down at their two hands.
“I know I shouldn’t have spoken,” he said, with a stubborn desire to blame himself.
“I’m glad you did. Because—because—I’d a kind of feeling you despised me.”
“Despised you!”
“Well—for going on about my voice and getting up in the air over things. You’re so sensible.”
Diego found Josie, just as he had expected, standing before an easel on which was propped his picture, with an expression of complete absorption.
“You’re to come down and make coffee,” he said from the doorway.
She backed away a little from the picture, still staring at it, ignoring him.
“Have you been doing anything to it?” he asked, coming up behind her.
“Idiot! Could I do anything in this light?” The attic room was lighted by a kerosene lamp with a somewhat smoky chimney. The light from this shewed the walls covered with pictures, finished and unfinished, all the work of Diego, excepting one which hung by