"I expect I am a little mad," he answered, feeling now not shy, but oddly troubled.
"I wish you would teach me how to be mad. I am far too sane to be happy."
"I couldn't teach anyone anything except how to play the fool."
Mother and son were leading the way to the dining-room.
Finch saw that the table, delicately bright, was laid for four. Evidently Mrs. Leigh was a widow, though she did not look at all like Finch's idea of one. Perhaps her husband was merely out of town.
Nothing could draw him into conversation. With set face he ate his way slowly and solemnly through the intricacies of the meal. Leigh, depressed by the sense that his friend was making no impression but one of stupidity on his mother and sister, talked little. Ada seemed to make no effort to please anyone but herself, and her pleasure apparently lay in making Finch aware of the insistent gaze of her long, heavy-lidded eyes. Mrs. Leigh alone kept the talk from dying into silence. Her voice, lighter and higher than her daughter's, flowed brightly on, though Finch had the feeling that her thoughts were far away. Across her brightness a shadow fell once when she referred to the "time of my husband's death, five years ago."
When dinner was over she left them, returning only for a moment to the drawing-room in an ermine evening cloak to say good-bye before she was whirled away in a dove-grey limousine. They had followed her to the stone porte cochère to see her off. Leigh had tucked her in and kissed both her hands.
"Isn't she the most adorable mother to own?" he demanded, as they returned to the fireside.
"Rather," agreed Finch, his eyes on Ada. She had settled herself among the cushions of a deep couch, her narrow sloping shoulders, her slender arms, from which open filmy lace sleeves fell away, seeming almost transparent in their whiteness. Between her rather pale lips she held a Chinese-red cigarette-holder.
