THE SACRED FOUNT
"And the ladies?"
"Oh, they've floated away—soared aloft; to high jinks—isn't that the idea?—in their own quarters. Don't they too, at these hours, practise sociabilities of sorts? They make, at any rate, here, an extraordinary picture on that great staircase."
I thought a moment. "I wish I had seen it. But I do see it. Yes—splendid. Is the place wholly cleared of them?"
"Save, it struck me, so far as they may have left some 'black plume as a token'———"
"Not, I trust," I returned, "of any 'lie' their 'soul hath spoken!' But not one of them lingers?"
He seemed to wonder. "'Lingers?' For what?"
"Oh, I don't know—in this house!"
He looked at our long vista, still lighted—appeared to feel with me our liberal ease, which implied that unseen powers waited on our good pleasure and sat up for us. There is nothing like it in fact, the liberal ease at Newmarch. Yet Obert reminded me—if I needed the reminder—that I mustn't after all presume on it. "Was one of them to linger for you?"
"Well, since you ask me, it was what I hoped. But since you answer for it that my hope has not been met, I bow to a superior propriety."
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