And absorbedly Barry Elder listened, his eyes on her changing face. When she paused he flung in some question or some anecdote of his own times in Italy and Sandy was often roused by unseasonable laughter, and thudded his tail in sleepy friendliness before dozing off to his dreams again.
Then like a flash, as swiftly as it had come, the excited glow of recollection was an extinguished flame, leaving her shivering before a nearer memory.
For Barry Elder asked one question too many. He brought the present down upon them.
"And how do you like America?" he asked. "Has it been good fun for you up here?"
Only the blind could have missed the change that came over the girl's face, blotting out its laughter and etching in queer, startled fear.
Despairingly she asked herself why she still tried to hide her story from him since in the morning it must all come out. He would know all about her then. And what must he be thinking already of her stammered evasions?
Oh, if only on that yesterday, which seemed a thousand yesterdays away, she had stayed closely by her Cousin Jane! If she had not let her folly wreck all her life!
Bitterly ironic to know that all the time Barry Elder was here, at hand. If only she had known! Had he just come?
And at that Barry's face changed as if he had remembered something he would have been as glad to forget.
"Oh--I've been here a few days," he gave back vaguely.
She glanced about the shadowy room. "So alone?"
A wry smile touched his mouth. "I came for alone-ness. I had a play to write--I wanted to work some things out for myself," and indefinably but certainly Maria Angelina caught the impression that all the things he wanted to work out for himself in this solitude were not connected with his play.
His linked hands had slipped over his knees and he looked ahead of him very steadily into the fire, and Maria Angelina had a feeling that he looked that way into the fire many evenings, so oddly, grimly intent, with oblivious eyes and faintly ironic lips.
He was quiet so long, without moving, that she felt as if he had forgotten her. He did not look happy. . . . Something dark had touched him. . . .
"Is it something you want that you cannot get, Signor?" she asked him in a grave little voice.