Isn't Borden sweet to bother teaching me that heel tap. Go in and talk
to Mrs. Craddock again; I thought you liked her."
In the hall the victrola had been started in opposition to the piano
beyond, and the result was a pandemonium of mechanical sound and
hysterical laughter. Cytherea was unmoved, enigmatic, fascinating; the
gilt of her headdress shone in minute sparkles--Lee had turned on the
lights by the mantel. "You always come back to her," Mrs. Craddock
said. When he replied that this time he had returned to her, she shook
her head sceptically. "But I suppose you have to say it." He dropped
back into a corner of one of the benches; they were a jumble of skirts
and reclining heads and elevated pumps. The victrola, at the end of a
record and unattended, ran on with a shrill scratch. Cytherea had the
appearance of floating in the restrained light; her smile was not now
so mocking as it was satirical; from her detached attention she might
have been regarding an extraordinary and unpredictable spectacle which
she had indifferently brought about. It was evident that among what
virtues she might possess charity was not present.
* * * * *
After the last automobile leaving--shifted through the diminishing
clamor of its gears--had carried its illumination into the farther
obscurity of the road, Fanny, uncomfortable in the presence of
disorder, quickly obliterated the remaining traces of their party: she
emptied the widely scattered ash trays into a brass bowl, gathered the
tall whiskey glasses and the glasses with fragile stems and brilliantly
enamelled belligerent roosters, the empty charged water bottles, on the
dresser in the pantry, and returned chairs and flowers to their
recognized places, while Lee locked up the decanters of whiskey.
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