case; but, after a perfunctory glance, he dropped them beside him on
the floor.

"Really, Lee, your condition is getting dreadful," Fanny observed; "you
are too nervous for words. Go in and look at that doll you brought from
New York. She ought to teach you repose even if I can't." A swift
concern shadowed her eyes. "Are you doing too much, do you think? It
isn't necessary, you know. We have plenty. I don't understand why you
will go so hard at all those fool concerns of yours. There might be a
mortgage on us, from the way you work."

The latter part of her speech he forgot in the calling of his attention
to Cytherea. Fanny had said that the doll might tranquilize him. The
opposite was more probable--Cytherea, what could be more disturbing?
Fanny hadn't noticed her smile, the long half-closed eyes, the
expression of malicious tenderness, if such a thing were possible, the
pale seductiveness of her wrists and hands, the finger nails stained
with vermilion. He tried to imagine a woman like that, warm, no--
burning, with life. It seemed to Lee the doll became animated in a
whisper of cool silk, but he couldn't invent a place, a society, into
which she fitted. Not Eastlake, certainly, nor New York ... perhaps
Cuba. What a vanity of nonsense his thoughts had led him back into:
Cytherea, a thing of wax, was on the over-mantel beyond the hall; Cuba
beyond the sea.

The smoke of another cigar, precisely in the manner of the one before,
hung between him and the piano. His wife settled contentedly in the
curly maple rocker, her rings flashing in the swift drawing of threads
from a square of linen.