turned out across the great sward of moon-drenched lawn towards the shine and wink and velvet mystery of the noble river far below. In the quality of silence that held all these people, there was a sense of profound emotion—the reference to “poor Dick” had touched some sorrowful fact that all of them knew about, and one could sense this deep feeling now in the stony silence that held all of them. It was broken in a moment by Mrs. Pierce, who betrayed, by the studied matter-of-factness of her tone, the emotion which she, too, had felt.
“But it is an extraordinary thing, George—a simply astonishing thing—to find a young man of your age who has read and studied—and—and—prepared himself for life the way you have. It’s simply astonishing!” she concluded, and then did what was perhaps an astonishing thing for her—quickly and vigorously she blew her nose. “But simply astonishing!” she said again, as she thrust the handkerchief away and put a cigarette into her eight-inch holder.
“No, I think not,” he said quietly, and without a trace of vanity or false modesty. “It would have been astonishing if I had not done it. After all, my debt to society for all that it has done for me is great enough as it is: I could not with any decency look the world in the face if I knew that I had not made some effort to repay it.”
“How few rich young men feel that way about it,” said Mrs. Pierce quietly. “I wish more did!”
The conversation was now turned to other, lighter channels of discussion: gossip, spirited but light debate. Mrs. Pierce renewed her conversation with Howard and Polly; farther away upon the steps Rosalind, Seaholm, a dark girl named Ruth, and George Thornton talked, gossiped and laughed together with the charming intimacy of youth, and Joel and Miss Telfair were engaged in eager and excited debate—Joel, for the most part, listening with the eager, respectful, bent-forward attentiveness, the devoted courtesy of reverence, that marked all of his relations with women, and Miss Telfair doing most of the talking. She talked the way she looked and dressed and acted, the way she was: a speech fragile, empty, nervous, brittle, artificial and incisive as one of the precious bits of china, the costly, rare, enamelled little trinkets that filled up her house, her life, her interest.
“No, Joel!” she was saying with a voice that had a curious, shell-like penetration—a positive, brittle, but incisively certain voice—“you are absolutely wrong! You are completely mistaken about that! The thing cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called Sienese! It is
