He awaited Perdita in her reception-room, that charming apartment, and here, in view of certain events which occurred later, it would be well to give the plan of the first floor.
This room opened from the hall and ran the length of the house with windows at the front looking out upon the street while those in the rear opened upon a strip of garden. There was another door at the lower end of the room, which, with the long room, formed an ell, and terminated the hall.
Dita kept Hepworth waiting a bare moment. Her approach was unkindly noiseless, but nevertheless he heard her, and was on his feet, his eyes meeting hers full as she appeared in the doorway. The conventional banalities of greeting were gone through with ease on his part, grace on hers.
Merciful banalities! They gave him time to consider the change in her, a change which was to him sufficiently striking almost to have trapped him into an expressed surprise, and this change was so subtle that he wondered that it should yet be so apparent. It was not a matter of outward appearance, that remained the same in effect. It was a mental change so animating and vital that Cresswell felt all former estimates of her crumble. Had she always been so, and had he never really seen her until now? Had time and absence in some way cleared his obscured vision? He felt a momentary sense of confusion, a brief mental giddiness, and then he pulled himself together. The first impression was the correct one. She had changed, and thereby had gained, gained tremendously in poise.
But there was no time now in which to analyze impressions.
"So this is the magic parlor where all the ugly women are transformed into beauties." He looked about him as if he had not thought to glance at her surroundings before. "The presence of mere man here seems rather profane, do you not think so? Ah, well, my stay is brief. You have proved, haven't you, that it is not an impossibility after all, to paint the lily and gild refined gold?"
"So few women have any taste," she said carelessly. "And oh, their houses! You should see them when I go over their hideous houses like a devouring flame and ruthlessly order out all their dreadful junk. And the most awful objects are always the most precious in their eyes. I feel so sorry for them. I have always a guilty sense of being a naughty boy robbing a bird's nest, and the poor mother birds stand around and flap their wings and hop and shriek. It's very mournful, but they needn't have me if they don't want me."