I had heard Regina Barry’s voice on entering, and knew that I was up against my fate. That is to say, the revolver lay ready in my desk. Knowing that such a meeting as this must occur some time, I was in earnest as to using the weapon on the day when her eyes accused me. As I took off my overcoat and hat and laid them on a settle in the hall, I said I should probably do it when I went home that night. It would depend on how she looked at me.
Meeting me at the door of the drawing-room, Mrs. Coningsby was sweet and kindly in her welcome without being over-demonstrative. I had heard of her beauty, but was not prepared for anything so magnificent. Her height, her complexion, her hair, her free movements—were those of a goddess. I liked and admired Coningsby; but I wondered how even he had caught this Atalanta and imprisoned her in a flat on the west side of New York.
“You know Miss Barry, don’t you?” were the words with which she directed me toward the end of the room, where the other guest was seated in a low arm-chair by a corner of the fireplace.
So the supreme moment came. I went the length of the room knowing that I was facing it.
I suppose it is instinct that tells women how to avoid comparisons with each other by creating contrasts. Knowing that in competition with her hostess she would have everything to lose, Miss Barry used Mrs. Coningsby as a foil. In other words, she had divined the fact that her friend would be in black with a spangling of blue-green sequins, and so had enhanced her own vividness by dressing in a bright rose-red. What she lacked in beauty, therefore, she made up in a brilliancy that stood out against the pale-gold ocher background with the force of a flaming flower.
As I stooped to take the hand she held up languidly I tried to search her eyes. They told me nothing. The fire in them seemed not exactly to have gone out, but to have been hidden behind some veil of film through which one could get nothing but a glow. Had she meant to baffle me she couldn’t have done it more effectively; but, as I learned later, she meant nothing of the kind. Her greeting, as far as I could judge of it, was precisely that which she would have accorded to any other diner-out.
