The green drawing room offered the effect of a set piece—a static tableau sharply secluded from the principal drama going on out of doors and yet bound to it by the invisible links of grief.
An overwhelming air of repressed anguish hung about Mrs. Millay. She was seated without comfort on a chair whose background of tufted cerise satin emphasized the disease-raddled qualities of her bloodless face.
On one side of her sat Miss Lynndecourt. From her acidulous age of seventy she presented the role of a guardian escort and a spindle of strength. On the other flank Miss Tishman (fifty) suggested a pallid, ever-hoping-to-be-helpful, tasseled fringe. Straight out of stock, Margot thought. Both of them.
“I had to come, Miss Gilland,” Mrs. Millay said. “I couldn’t have stood it, not coming.”
Fr
