"Shed a few tears for the public, my dear," he called out, following her with the impertinence of a man who has a right to dispense with civilities. "You can afford them; for eventually you'll come into as tidy a fortune as was ever won in six months' time. But before we get down to business, Sheila my dear, I am starving; could you get me a bite."
Seizing further opportunity to prepare herself for the encounter she passed into the dining-room, after bidding him be seated with a conventionality as marked as his affectation of intimacy. As he was settling in a chair he suddenly remembered his bag and returned to the vestibule.
The parlor breathed an air of imitation and a striving for luxury, which after the first impression of ridicule had a certain note of pathos. Everything was of the factory, with the odor of the bargain-counter. One saw the decoration before the body, overwhelmed by a confused sense of plush and gilt, of reds and greens, of false cherubs and artificial flowers, of airy, bejeweled furniture for which, in the department stores, one imagines in vain a purchaser. In the medallion carpet all the colors fought, in the portieres the Byzantine wrestled with the Gothic, the Roman with the Greek.
Before selecting a comfortable chair, Bofinger peeled off a pair of yellow gloves, looked about in indecision and placed them gingerly on an étagère. Next, whisking out a lilac handkerchief, he slapped vigorously the dust from his shoes. Then bringing forth a number of documents from the bag he smoothed them nervously on his knee, replaced them, and suddenly raised his head to follow the movements of the woman with a perplexed intensity, in which there was both irritation and anxiety.
On the body of a dandy was set the head of a comedian. One and the other produced a like impression of sham. He was too solicitous of his clothes, too conscious of his manner. His collar was worn with discomfort, his checked tweed cutaway was too tight, his shoes too new; while, on establishing himself in his chair, he had thrown open his coat on a buckskin vest, heavily sealed, and a purple tie, held in four-in-hand by a fat horseshoe, with the ill-at-ease of the man who never quite familiarizes himself with his own audacity.