They had just completed, as a relief from the nightly round of lunch
rooms, a wood-alcohol meal of canned baked beans, cheese, crackers, and
tinned sweet cakes. Even Mrs. Blair, at an age when the years are at
the throat of a woman, shriveling it, had opened her blouse at the neck,
revealing an unsuspected survival of its whiteness.
Lilly sang "Jocelyn," a lullaby dimmed in her memory by the mist of
years and full of inaccuracies. She had last sung it at Flora Kemble's.
It lay on the twilight after she had finished.
"How pretty! Why don't you let one of the Visigoths hear you? It might
lead to something."
"Robert V. has heard me."
"Well, I don't pretend to be a judge of music, but considering your
youth and looks and when I see the kind of thing that does get across--"
"I know. I used to feel that way about it, too--hot, rebellious--but,
somehow, not any more. Strange that it should have taken my child to
show me. I realized it last winter when I heard Eames. I simply hadn't
it to give, except in desire. Why, her voice--it seemed to climb up
around an invisible spiral staircase to the stars; and that wasn't all!
There was something so richly colored through it--like the candy stripe
through a crystal.
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