The proprietor assented, and urged them up a
stair. "I won't have you wait out here," Lee told Savina; "it will be
only for an hour or so." The room into which they were ushered had, at
least, the advantage of bareness: there was a wardrobe of mahogany
leaning precariously forward, a double bed deeply sagged with a grey-
white covering, a wash stand and tin basin and pitcher, and some short
sturdy rush-bottomed chairs.
Its principal feature, however, was the blue paint that covered the
walls, a blue of a particularly insistent shade which, in the solidity
of its expanse, seemed to make all the enclosed space and objects
livid. The tall shutters on one side, Lee discovered, opened on the
upper porch and a prospect of the tracks beyond. "If I stayed here a
night I'd be raving," Savina declared. "Lee, such a color! And the
place, the people--did you notice that carriageful of black women that
went by us along the street? There were only three, but they were so
loosely fat that they filled every inch. Their faces were drenched with
powder and you could see their revolting breasts through their muslin
dresses; terrible creatures reeking with unspeakable cologne. They
laughed at me, cursed us, I am sure."
"We'll have to put up with it till Daniel comes," he observed
philosophically; and, on the low straight chairs, they gazed around so
disgustedly that they both laughed.
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