Stella gazed at the high, dignified walls silently a moment. “I can just see her in it, entertaining her young friends; walking around on that terrace with Richard Grosvenor—he’s somebody your sons know, a young man that is just crazy about Lollie—walking along in her slow grand way under those big aristocratic-looking trees down there; yes, it will suit her fine. That’s why I wanted to come out—to see what it was like. I walked by your city house last night. It was closed, but I could get an idea. I suppose you think that’s funny, but I’ve picked out Laurel’s clothes so much—” she stopped. “I couldn’t see some of the other rooms, could I? I’ll never be here again, and, well—you know, it’s sort of nice to be able to think of a person in a house or room you’ve seen yourself, when they write. I thought Laurel and I might write.”

“Of course you’ll write. Oh, it will only be as if she were away at school or college, having all the things you want her to have. Come out into the dining-room. Come out into the garden. Laurel loves the garden. And then come upstairs. The violet guest-room is Laurel’s now. Come and see her pretty valanced bed.”

Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

1

STEPHEN SAT IN his office, fifteen floors above the sidewalk and street thermometer that registered ninety-five. He sat in the gentle breeze of two silently revolving electric fans, in front of his desk, in a big chair with his elbows on its arm, and his hands folded. He was dictating, gazing out of the high window toward the northeast with a look in his eyes as if he saw a hundred miles away.

Today, as Stephen sat and gazed, searched, and selected, he was aware of the heat, aware of the rumble of the city outside, aware of the loud insistent pound—pound—pound of a riveter at work near by, aware of his own fatigue, too. He sighed deeply now and then. When Stephen was tired, and gazed out of the high windows in the direction of the green lawns and white beaches of Long Island, there was a Helen between every careful phrase that he spoke.

At a quarter of one that day, or thereabouts, Stephen raised his wrist and glanced at it.

“Time for one more, I think, Miss Mills. Pretty hot, isn’t it? Can you stand it? All right. Ready.”

He was attacking a difficult second paragraph—twice already had murmured, “No, start again”—when there was a repressed burr at his side. He frowned, turned away from his engrossed contemplation of the illimitable space outside his window and reached for the telephone, supporting it upon his chest as he leaned back again and spoke into it.

“Who is it?” he asked.