Although it was ten minutes past seven her guest had not arrived, and she went into the drawing-room to wait for him. She felt some vanity in displaying her salon to one who she knew instinctively possessed a cultivated and exacting taste. It was a large room on the right of the entrance, with a row of alcoves on the garden side, each furnished to represent one of the purple flowers. The woodwork was ivory-white; the silk panels of the same shade were painted with violets or lilacs, pansies, asters, orchids, or lilies, as if reflecting the alcoves. There was but one picture, a full-length portrait of Styr as Brynhildr, by Lenbach. The spindle-legged furniture was covered with pale brocades and not aggressively of any period. It was distinctly a “Styr Room,” as her admirers, who were admitted on the first Sunday of the month, had long since agreed, while sealing it with their approval.
At half-past seven Ordham was shown in, exclaiming: “I am so sorry! But my driver went to sleep. I am positive of it. I spent the entire time between Barerstrasse and Schwabing crying ‘_Schnell!_’”
“They are always at least half asleep at this hour. They have reached almost the limit of their day’s allowance of beer. For that matter, I often see them asleep in the park three hours earlier, huddled down into their meridians and trusting to their patient old nags to keep the road. One drove up a tree in front of my window not long since. Shall we go in to supper?”
The dining-room was across the hall, a stately little room fitted up in brown and dull gold. The small table, with its delicate service of porcelain and crystal, was perfectly appointed, and the simple supper of _omelette aux fines herbes_, pigeons, salad, and American hot breads, was so refreshing to Ordham, after the heavy English cooking of the Legation, and the heavier of such of the Bavarian aristocracy as did not employ chefs, that it diverted and comforted him. But he had looked pale and harassed when he entered, and Styr bore her purpose in mind.
They talked, as Hélène had anticipated, of Wagner, and Margarethe succeeded in interesting him deeply when she spoke of her early doubts and fears, not of the difficulties of the music, but of the strange women she must portray.