So her effects were deliberately contrived. She must realize that in a ruffled dress with permanented hair and china doll make-up she would be not only plain but commonplace. It was the severely straight hair, the sun-browned skin, and the crips dresses with their emphatic contrast of the darkest and lightest of colors that made her a personage. “Is that the only reason?”
“For what?”
“For the nickname Magpie.”
“Of course.” Her eyelids dropped. “What other reason could there be?”
“I don’t know. I wondered.”
“My friends call me Margot, and Margot means Magpie in French. John was the first to call me Margot. His mother was French, you know. She came to America as a governess. John’s father was a friend of her first employer and a good many years older than she. John was an only child, and between them they spoiled him.”
“How did his affair with Wanda Morley start?”
She shrugged with a twisted smile. “How do those affairs always start? John and I were quarreling a good bit. I had become interested in the stage. I met Wanda somewhere, and she said she would help me to get a start. I invited her to the house and . . . it wasn’t long before she was John’s friend instead of mine. He even talked of backing her plays. But as she was still theoretically my friend seeing him in my home and in my presence, no one suspected an affair between them at first, and later they were very careful. They even tried to hide the affair from me, so I wouldn’t bring counter charges and demand big alimony. Before he went to Panama he said he wanted a divorce from me. I wasn’t supposed to know he meant to marry Wanda; but I had guessed, and I refused. I tried everything I could think of to get him back but—we had quarreled too much. We no longer had any illusions about each other. Something that had been between us was gone, and you just couldn’t bring it back again.”
“What did you quarrel about?”
“Oh, nothing . . . everything . . .” She looked down now, playing with the gloves in her lap. “When a man gets tired of a woman any pretext for a quarrel will do.”
“Was one of the pretexts money?”
“Money?” Her light lashes flared back again and the wide, pale eyes stared into his. “No. I could have had all the money I wanted. But I didn’t want money—I wanted John. If only I’d realized sooner that he wanted children . . .” She spoke in a cold, level voice without apparent feeling. Basil wondered if it were really John she had wanted or the prestige and power of being his wife.
The taxi stopped in the shadow of a skyscraper apartment house towering against a sky that looked hard as a gray-blue stone.
“Won’t you come in?”
He followed her into the lobby. An express elevator rocketed twenty-three stories and they stepped into a vestibule made of glass walls. Through the glass they could see a living room, spacious and impersonal as a hotel lounge. It was surrounded by a terrace on all four sides. Each window framed a slice of garden chairs and shrubbery, parapet, and gray-blue sky. Awnings kept the living room shady and cool. It was furnished in the modern manner—an enormous, velvety rug all one color; plump davenports that seemed capacious enough to seat a regiment; radios that looked like tables and tables that looked like radios; little groups of book shelves with few books; and a great many bits of modern glass and pottery in unexpected corners. The whole thing was done in soothing, unobtrusive shades of cream and tan. The sober colors and stripped, functional lines expressed Margot’s nature perfectly. Had it expressed John Ingelow’s too? Or would he have preferred something more flamboyant—like Wanda’s drawing room?
There was no glossy display of silken luxury here. The magnificence of the place lay in its space and privacy—dearest of all luxuries on Manhattan Island.
“Wonderful place for children or pets,” said Basil.
“And I have neither!”
“Not even a canary?”
“Not in New York. I have a pair of Irish setters at Fernleigh and a whole stableful of saddle horses. I believe there are some canaries in the conservatory there. I never paid any attention to them. They belonged to John’s mother.”
With a crisp rustle of taffeta skirts Margot crossed the broad, shady room to the sunlit terrace. Far below the city lay wide and flat as a parti-colored carpet between its twin rivers. The clarity of the noon horizon had gone. The west was blurred with streamers of cloud. Glass and brightwork on cars and buildings glinted in the sun through a smoky blue haze.
The terrace was gay with spring flowers nodding to a brisk breeze. Margot dropped into a wicker armchair and touched a bell attached to the arm. It must have been a pre-arranged signal, for almost at once a maid appeared with a tray of Tom Collins’.
“There is a gentleman to see you, ma’am—Mr. Adeane.”
“I don’t believe I know a Mr. Adeane.” Margot cocked an inquiring brow at Basil.
“He played one of
“Oh.” Margot considered this. “Perhaps I’d better see him.”
