Marise stood on the high terrace which looked towards the rose-and-gold gulf of the Canyon. Gazing out, between the dark slim trunks of pines, she saw the sunlight moving slowly from rock to rock. "It's like stray sheep of the golden fleece," she thought, "being herded by an invisible shepherd to join the flock."
Yes, the moving gleams were all massed together now. But they were travelling on. Suddenly they had ceased to be a flock of sheep. They were shining bricks, built into a citadel.
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately palace dome decree," Marise quoted to herself.
How astonishing that so marvellous a place had existed for thousands upon thousands of years, and she had hardly heard of it, until John Garth had brought her to this house of his!
"Vision House" was the right name for it. Garth hadn't meant it like that—or if he had, he'd not told her so!—but one had visions here. One couldn't think little ordinary, foolish thoughts. Life seemed to be upon its highest plane, and whether one wished to do so or not, one had to try and reach that plane. One wanted to be at one's best, to be "in the picture"—and the best must be very good. It must even be noble.
Whoever had designed Vision House and chosen its furnishings had felt that. There were great windows bowed out in generous eagerness towards the Canyon. There were wide loggias, upheld by clear-cut, pale stone pillars. In the rooms were no brilliant colours to jar with the rainbow glory just beyond the delicate green veil of pines. The curtains of grey or cream fell in soft, straight lines that framed a glowing picture—rocks of every fantastic form and flaming colour, under the blue of heaven: rocks like castles carved of coral and studded with lapis lazuli: statue rocks of transparent amethyst, or emerald, glittering where the sun touched them or fading to the smoky blue of star-sapphires as the shadows crept up from the bottom of the vast bowl.
There was an organ in one of the rooms. Garth had thought that the finest piano in the world would be too tinkling a thing so near the thrilling silence of the Canyon. He could play the great instrument himself. She wouldn't have believed it, if she had not heard the music as she walked alone on the terrace by moonlight, and had gone to peep in at the long, open window. How he could play!—though he said casually, when she asked him, "Oh, I wanted to do it, so I taught myself. I hear things in my head. I like to make them come out." A queer fellow!
In the library there were only books which Garth thought "worthy of the Canyon." But in her room there were a few French novels. It was the one place in the house, too, where there were pretty, frivolous decorations such as a Parisian beauty of the seventeenth, or an American of the twentieth, century would love. That was what he thought of her! She would crave such surroundings at the Grand Canyon, as well as in New York or London! She, and no one else whom he had ever planned to bring here!
When Marise thought of that room, and the difference between it and all the others, she felt—not angry, for one couldn't feel angry for small reasons, close to the greatness of the Canyon,—no, not angry, but pained, and—wistful.
She was wistful because she could not help seeing that the things Garth must hastily have ordered for her pleasure were actually suited to her type, her personality, and she had growing pains of the spirit which made her long to climb high and higher, out of herself. Somehow that room seemed to represent herself: soft and vaguely sweet; pretty, perfumed, charming, fantastic and—forgetable. How should Garth have known that she would suddenly become a different self, irradiated by the sublime glory of this place? Why, even she hadn't known it, until she had begun to feel the change! And it had started at sight of the difference between those other, nobly simple rooms, which somehow matched the Canyon, and hers which childishly laughed in its face.
Or—had Garth expected her to change, under the influence, which was like the influence of all the gods, and wanted her to feel the difference as she was feeling it now?
As she asked herself this question a pretty, half-breed Mexican maid flitted out upon the terrace and announced "Ze Earl of Sev'rance."
Marise started. She need not have been surprised. She ought to have known (having heard of ?none's death) that any day might bring Tony to her. But the truth was that, for the time—quite a long time—she had forgotten all about him.
He didn't belong to the Grand Canyon! But suddenly she felt a desire to see what he would be like, confronting it.
"Show Lord Severance out here," she directed the maid. And then, between the moment when the girl turned her back, and the moment when Tony stepped through an open window-door of the drawing-room, Marise had to realise that she faced a crisis—had to prepare for it.
The red-gold light that always came from the Canyon like flame made Severance seem to have deep mauve rings under his eyes, an appearance which gave him a dissipated look. She began by not thinking him as deadly handsome as she had always thought him in London and sometimes in New York. No, certainly he didn't go well with Canyons and things like that! But, of course, he was tired. He had travelled fast, and a very long way—to meet her. She ............