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Part of the contents spilled over his fingers and splashed upon the polished table-top. As the diffused odor reached his nostrils a wave of nausea swept over him. With a shudder he drained the glass at a gulp and groped blindly for the water-pitcher, from which he greedily swallowed great quantities of ice-water. He paused before a tall pier-glass and surveyed himself through bloodshot eyes.
There were ashes sifting out of the stove, rings of soot and grease on the table-top, more soot, and the prints of muddy boots on the floor. Milk had soured in the bottles, odds and ends of food were everywhere, Betsey's book was open on the table, propped against the streaked and stained coffee-pot. "Your mother's ill?" asked Susan. She could think of no other explanation.
"But now," continued Merlin excitedly, "I understand. Understanding is allowed to us old people after nothing much matters. I see now that on a certain night when you danced upon a table-top you were nothing but my romantic yearning for a beautiful and perverse woman." Her old eyes were far away, her voice no more than the echo of a forgotten dream. "How I danced that night! I remember."
Neal let his eyes fall to the table-top and indulged in a slow smile, which he appeared to be struggling courteously, but without hope, to suppress. "O' course you got a right to your opinion, Mr. West." A brief silence ensued, during which a tiny imp of memory whispered into West's ear that Miss Weyland herself had commented on the Rev. Mr. Dayne's marvelous gifts as a lobbyist.
Joe Kirby, dark, corpulent, and black of cigar. "Come right in, Joe! I'm here and waitin' for you." "Ain't the missis in on this killin'?" "She Not this " "No, Joe; not to-night." "Sorry to hear it," said Mr. Kirby, flecking an inch of cigar-ash to the table-top. "Fine rig-up, with due respect to the lady, your missis is wearing to-night." "The wife ain't so short on looks, is she?" "Blutch!"
I do not think one could have seen where two particles joined each other with eyes of ordinary shrewdness. Certainly we could detect no such blemish. This table-top cost the labor of one man for ten long years, so they said, and it was for sale for thirty-five thousand dollars. It is popular to admire the Arno.
To begin with, it was plain that that match, being left there in daylight, in Mrs. Cazenove's room, could not have been used to light the table-top, in the full glare of the window; therefore it had been used for some other purpose what purpose I could not, at the moment, guess.
From the chiffonier had gone the knick-knacks of silver and plate. From the table-top, the lace coverings. He opened the wardrobe no clothes of hers. He opened the drawers nothing of hers. Her trunk was gone from its accustomed place. Back in his own room hung his old clothes, just as he had left them. Nothing else was gone.
I recall now that the lady sitting between me and Clifford gave it a twirl which sent it spinning over the bare table-top. I don't think she realised the action. She was listening we all were to a flow of bright repartee going on below us, and failed to follow the movements of the coin. Otherwise, she would have spoken.
"Let that match," he smilingly suggested, "stand for the circumstance of the Grand Duke leaving Paris for Cadiz which is well, nearer to Puntal and less observant than Paris." He laid another on the marble table-top with its sulphur head close to the first, so that the two radiated from a common center like spokes from a hub.
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