At first he thought nothing.
She was young and magnetic, but so was Topsy.
He guessed that she had had lovers and had loved them in the last four years.
Well, you never knew exactly how much space you occupied in people’s lives.
Yet from this fog his affection emerged—the best contacts are when one knows the obstacles and still wants to preserve a relation.
The past drifted back and he wanted to hold her eloquent giving-of-herself in its precious shell, till he enclosed it, till it no longer existed outside him.
He tried to collect all that might attract her—it was less than it had been four years ago.
Eighteen might look at thirty-four through a rising mist of adolescence; but twenty-two would see thirty-eight with discerning clarity.
Moreover, Dick had been at an emotional peak at the time of the previous encounter; since then there had been a lesion of enthusiasm.
When the valet returned he put on a white shirt and collar and a black tie with a pearl; the cords of his reading-glasses passed through another pearl of the same size that swung a casual inch below.
After sleep, his face had resumed the ruddy brown of many Riviera summers, and to limber himself up he stood on his hands on a chair until his fountain pen and coins fell out.
At three he called Rosemary and was bidden to come up.
Momentarily dizzy from his acrobatics, he stopped in the bar for a gin-and-tonic.
“Hi, Doctor Diver!”
Only because of Rosemary’s presence in the hotel did Dick place the man immediately as Collis Clay.
He had his old confidence and an air of prosperity and big sudden jowls.
“Do you know Rosemary’s here?” Collis asked.
“I ran into her.”
“I was in Florence and I heard she was here so I came down last week.
You’d never know Mama’s little girl.”
He modified the remark,
“I mean she was so carefully brought up and now she’s a woman of the world—if you know what I mean.
Believe me, has she got some of these Roman boys tied up in bags!
And how!”
“You studying in Florence?”
“Me?
Sure, I’m studying architecture there.
I go back Sunday—I’m staying for the races.”
With difficulty Dick restrained him from adding the drink to the account he carried in the bar, like a stock-market report.
XX
When Dick got out of the elevator he followed a tortuous corridor and turned at length toward a distant voice outside a lighted door.
Rosemary was in black pajamas; a luncheon table was still in the room; she was having coffee.
“You’re still beautiful,” he said.
“A little more beautiful than ever.”
“Do you want coffee, youngster?”
“I’m sorry I was so unpresentable this morning.”
“You didn’t look well—you all right now?
Want coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“You’re fine again, I was scared this morning.
Mother’s coming over next month, if the company stays.
She always asks me if I’ve seen you over here, as if she thought we were living next door.
Mother always liked you—she always felt you were some one I ought to know.”
“Well, I’m glad she still thinks of me.”
“Oh, she does,” Rosemary reassured him.
“A very great deal.”
“I’ve seen you here and there in pictures,” said Dick.
“Once I had Daddy’s Girl run off just for myself!”
“I have a good part in this one if it isn’t cut.”
She crossed behind him, touching his shoulder as she passed.