CHAPTER   20.

THE DINING ROOM OF THE CANYONSIDE house was on the northwest, with a semicircle of glass for the outer wall. There they supped, by candlelight. But the curtains were not drawn and they saw the day die, far off on the mountaintops, where it had lingered later than here. Thursday was slipping to the west. It would be over the ocean. Soon gone to sea.

The meal was very informal, since there was no Elsie to cook or serve it. Ione, at the foot of the table, filled their plates from a huge casserole and an even larger salad bowl. She handled the serving spoons with dainty pride. Bolt upright she sat, in a dull lavender silk frock, crisply set off by a little white ruching. Her white hair was heaped high, showing her small ears, which wore tonight tiny amethyst buttons in the lobes. Amethyst beads, in an old-fashioned design, lay close around her soft neck, on the soft, pale, delicately wrinkled flesh that would be clean and scented. Her cheeks were pink, doll pink, on the round of the bones. Her dark eyes were pleased and sparkling in the candlelight.

So cute, she looked! Cute, adorable little old Mrs. Santa Claus, with such pink, clean, brisk, and busy little hands!

Fanny, like a raddled old parrot who had fought age to a draw and now ignored the whole matter with a kind of brilliant indifference, was in shining black. She wore her diamonds.

Amanda’s dress was a simple, soft thing, with nothing remarkable about it except its color. It was crimson, rich red, a jewel color, so brilliant, lush, and startling in itself that she was less a girl than a, flame to the eye. It hid her. It picked her up and put her so brazenly in view, so flamboyantly and conspicuously burning there, that, in a sense, she was not seen. Tobias couldn’t keep his eyes off it. He could not look away. The color seemed to brace him. He was not quite so weary and spent in its reflected glow.

Thone, at her left, as the two of them faced Fanny, was shut off and closed away. He’d hardly turned his eyes toward Mandy. Communication was dead between them, as if all wires were cut. As they must be, she knew.

There had been one code message, however. A question asked and answered, before supper, when Thone, glancing casually at the evening paper, had muttered what seemed an aimless comment. “These chemists! What’ll they do next?”

And Mandy had murmured, as carelessly as she could, “Oh, they’ll discover something startling. They’re always working. Night and day.”

He hadn’t replied, as if he snubbed this friendly response. Fanny had picked it up. “I hope they get around to rejuvenation before it’s too late. I would be spitting mad, let me tell you, if I missed it by one generation. I’d like to be Amanda’s age again. By gum, I would!”

“Oh, I don’t know, Fanny,” Ione had said piously. “I think we forgot how youth can suffer.”

“Good for ’em,” snapped Fanny. “Did you ever read—”

Fanny did most of the talking.

That made it easier to sit here now, with supper nearly over and the evening upon them. To sit here in a crimson frock, listening, nodding, smiling, eating, playing the pretty young guest at the table. But really waiting. And certain, now, quite finally certain now, what it was she waited for.

Ione had spoken, in the kitchen, as Mandy, in one of Elsie’s big aprons, had helped as a young guest should. Mandy, breaking lettuce with her fingers, had received the expected and been braced for it. Thone didn’t know yet, but she knew. She was proud to think that her hands had gone right on. Nothing had happened to her breathing. Something had happened deep inside, a little click of the mind, and then a flowing relief, as if to know, for sure, was going to be easier and even heartening. As if the courage that had been strained, waiting to be used, was released to function, to exist, to take hold now, and let her smile … go headlong the way she was being pushed to go, and make it easy.

Ione had begun, “Oh, my dear! I’m afraid I’m supposed to be at the airport! I shouldn’t … But it would be such a shame … Oh, what a pity,” Ione had mourned, “to let those lovely cuttings die!”

“Couldn’t I go?” Amanda had asked. So sweet, so willing.