"Splendor! This is me. Marble--terraces--rugs that slide--only I want peacocks--that strut--and tails that open like fans and--starlight--him--" "Who?" "Silly darling--nobody--the world--life." There was no restraining her. She smoothed her mother's hair only to kiss it awry again. She fluffed a fragrant cloud of powder along her neck. Trilled at a drowsy canary in a wicker cage. Stretched herself in the conscious pose of a Recamier on the lacy mound of a chaise-longue, and finally followed her mother into the drawing-room, entirely at ease in the straight blue frock. It was a room almost the width of the house, with a balcony at one end hung in a shah's silk prayer rug, and a stone fireplace, out of the Davanziti palace, opposite. Three sets of leaded doors opened out on to a flagged parapet that overlooked the Hudson and beyond the deep purple of perfect September. They met in a little group at one of these doors, and Lilly noticed gratefully that Mrs. Enlow had thrown a net wrap over the formality of her evening gown and that Bruce had merely changed to flannels. He smiled at her with that impersonal sort of kindness which could cause such a gush of blood to her heart, and spread himself in a playful salaam before Zoe. "Princess." She held out her hand to be kissed, which he did five times, finger by finger. "These terraces," said Lilly, trying not to be heavy, "are like the setting for an Aegean romance." He smiled back at her again through the new film across his eyes. "Write it and I'll produce it." "Close the doors, Dicky; it's growing chilly," said Mrs. Enlow. "Yes," said Lilly, shivering a bit, "chilly." "And I'm burning, Dicky, Tickey Tavey," cried Zoe, applying the name audaciously. "How can anyone be chilly on such a night as this?" "Come, Princess, and I'll show you some stars." "Don't wander too far before dinner, children. Mrs. Penny and I will sit indoors. Only youth can risk swollen joints." "Yes," said Lilly, feeling herself rather terrifiedly past the fiercer rush of life, "only youth." They sat on a great overstuffed divan that faced the parapet, lighted softly at each end by the first lamps of evening. "Why, you poor child, you're shivering of chill! It's the damp. Let me get you a wrap." In the thickening silence Lilly sat alone looking out through the glass doors. Bruce and Zoe were silhouetted out there against a fathomless evening sky that was brilliantly pointed with a few big stars. But they were not gazing out. Her face was up to his like a flower about to be plucked, and, looking down into it, his whole body seemed to sway to its sweetness.