the cushions of the divan, his lean figure sprawled languidly, his dark eyes closed.
"And what do you do now?" asked Lily. "You must do something to occupy yourself."
Willie's plump face brightened. "I have a farm," he said. "I raise ducks and chickens." A slow smile crept over Lily's face. "It's a success too," he continued. "You needn't laugh at it. I make it pay. Why, I made this trip on last year's profits. And I have a great deal of fun out of it." He smiled again with an air of supreme contentment. "It's the first time I've ever done what I wanted to do."
Lily regarded him with a faint air of surprise. It may have been that she guessed then for the first time, that he was not after all a complete fool. He, too, like Ellen, like herself, even like Irene, had escaped in spite of everything.
They had been talking thus for half an hour when Ellen, followed by Paul Schneidermann, joined them. Willie stood up nervously.
"Paul," said Lily, "Mr. Harrison—Mr. Harrison, Monsieur Schneidermann." They bowed. "You are both steel manufacturers," she added with a touch of irony, "You will find much in common."
Willie protested. "No longer," he said. "Now I am a farmer."
"And I," said Schneidermann, "have never been. I am a musician. . . ." Ellen laughed scornfully and he turned to her with a curious blushing look of self-effacement, "Perhaps," he said, "dilettante is a better word."
For a time they talked—the stupid, polite conversation that occurs between strangers; and then, the proprieties satisfied, Ellen and Paul drifted quickly back into the realm of music. Lily devoted herself to Willie Harrison.
"It was too bad," he remarked, "about the house at Cypress Hill."
Lily leaned forward on the table holding up one white wrist to shield her eyes from the light of the candles. "Yes," she said. "I'm sorry . . . sentimentally, I suppose. I should never have gone back to it. It was perfectly useless to me. But I'm sorry it's gone. I suppose it, too, was changed."
