'It's very good of you to see me,' said Duff in his quiet voice. 'Everywhere I go, I try to talk with members of old and important families. You can understand that, as an historian, I find them fascinating.'
Gertrude's face showed a flash of animation.
'Please sit down,' she said. 'The armchair to the left of my bed, as you are standing. You'll find it comfortable.'
Gertrude herself, sat in an ancient rocker, upright, as usual. She wore gray sUk, a grim plain pattern, vastiy unbecoming and marred by a spot or two.
Her room was large and square, almost cubic, it seemed, so high was the ceiling. It was very bare and pain-
fully in order. Her bed wore an old-fashioned white bedspread. The window curtains were white. There was very litde color. Not a great deal of furniture. There were three tables in the big room, and Alice, conning the objects that stood on them, was surprised how few these were. The table near the bed had no lamp. A jug for water and a glass. That was all. The table near the window in the bay had a low bowl with bulbs in it. Narcissus. The table against the wall held a small wooden frame with some yam stretched across it, a device for weaving. It had scarcely been started. There was also a pack of playing cards.
The walls were perfectly bare. There were no pictures, but the conventional mirror was attached to the dresser. There were no books in the room. In the comer stood an old-fashioned phonograph with a crank. No radio. Alice wondered about that. But the radio was the voice of the brawling, tumultuous world; and this bare orderly room was Gertmde's, into which the tumult did not penetrate. Alice thought: I wonder if it gets into her mind. I wonder if she knows there is a war.
It was a sad room, somehow, and Alice looked with some pity at the woman's face.
That all-over straw-colored effect, she thought, would vanish with a little rouge and a lick or two with an eyebrow pencil. But of course not, although, peering closer, Alice thought she detected a streak of face powder. Straw-colored face powder, she supposed to herself, with an inner smUe.
Gertrude was speaking, 'My father's forebears come from New England. My mother was of old southem stock, although of a branch that migrated north and west.'
She knew her stuff, thought Alice. The delicate disdain with which Gertrude skirted sheer boasting alienated her agam.
Duff knew his stuff, too. He rounded out her picture with knowing murmurs. Through the room paraded the past, full of gallant and blue-blooded people.
Alice got up and tiptoed toward the closet door, which luckily stood open a crack. CJertrnde's sightless face was toward her. She felt conspicuous and exposed. The door swung easily as she touched it. Gertrude's dresses hung in
perfect order on a bar that ran across the closet. Surely, in no other closet did all the dresses face one way. All the left sleeves were toward her. She ran through them quickly. The right sleeves would be more difficult. She would have to burrow. And noiselessly.
Duff was saying, 'I wonder if you can describe your father for me, Miss Gertrude? lliat type of man, the aristocratic pioneer, I call him, seems to me to have made a great deal of our history.'
'I can see that you are right,' agreed Gertrude. 'My father was a man of great vigor and ability.' Two halves of a buckle clicked as the dresses swayed. Gertrude was rnunediately alert. 'Alice . . . ?' she said.
Alice caught her breath. How could she speak from behind Duff, where she shouldn't be? Desperately, she grabbed for the last sleeve to inspect it. She would do her job, anyhow.
Then she took two steps, swiftly, away from the closet. 'I thought, perhaps an ash tray,' she said.
Duff had a cigarette in his hand, like magic. 'I believe I have automatically taken out a cigarette,' he said apologetically. 'Forgive me, Miss Gertrude? Do you mind smoke?'
'Not at all,' said Gertrude graciously. 'Alice, dear, you will find an ash tray on the window sill of the bay.'
'That green dish?' said Duff.
'A small glass dish,' said Gertrude.
'Oh, yes, I have it.' Alice brought the dish, which was amber, to Duff, and he reached his hand for it.
'Thank you.'
Then her heart jumped. Duff didn't move and he made no sound, but his face contorted with revulsion and horror and surprise. The glass dish in her hand was perfectly clean and empty. She could see that. There was nothing wrong with it. Unless invisible insects wriggled there. Or Duff could see something loathsome under her shaking fingers that were loosening, in spite of her. She nearly dropped it.
Duff's hand went imder the dish. He said, and by a miracle of control, his voice reflected nothing that was in his face, 'Do you smoke. Miss Gertrude?'
'Thank you no,' said Gertrude. There was no ripple in her. If she could see Duffs face at all, she, too, had
miraculous control not to cry out, 'What's the matter?' But she said, 'I don't smoke, Mr. Duff. I think, perhaps, because I am blind, you know.''
Duff put the ash tray down on his knee and lit his cigarette. He leaned forward, bringing his face only a few feet from Gertrude Whitlock. 'I'm glad you said that,' he told her. 'One never can be quite sure . . . I've known blind persons who seem offended if their misfortune is mentioned. Why is that. Miss Gertrude? Because they wish to pretend . .. ?'
Gertrude said in her superior way, 'I am never offended. After all, to be blind is to be different from people who retain their sight.' Her tone came close to suggesting that people often retained their sight through sheer vulgarity. 'One can scarcely pretend. There are many difficulties, of course. But I simply resolved that I would not be a burden.'
Duffs long face grew roimder in a wide clownish smile. He winked at Alice and made, with his forefinger, the
