" Staring at her daughter, an old conceit of
Lilly's girlhood came flowing back. It seemed to her that a proscenium
arch of music was forming over Zoe and that her voice, a high-flung
scarf of melody, was winding itself reverently round a star.
* * * * *
That afternoon, Bruce Visigoth again asked Lilly to marry him.
Taking advantage of the quiet of a Saturday afternoon half holiday, she
had returned to the office to clear her desk of an accumulation of
loose ends.
In spite of herself, an extraordinary depression, low as storm clouds,
was gathering over the excitation whipped up by Trieste's acceptance
of Zoe.
The tight squeeze of a lump was gathering in her throat. Finally she
laid her cheek to the desk and cried a little pool of her unaccountable
melancholy on to the glassed surface.
Bruce Visigoth found her so, although, at his entrance, she sprang from
the mound of her misery, violently simulating affairs at a lower drawer.
"Hello!" he cried, then, eying her crumpled cheek and the lane of tears:
"Ah, I say now! Come, come; this won't do. What's up?"
She rubbed her bare hand furiously across the ravages of her sharp
depression.
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