Tony seated himself at the piano, groped tentatively for chords, and drifted into a nocturne. Margarita listened vaguely for a tune and then forgot he was playing. Never once did she hear the insistent call to her which ran like a thread through the melody She was thinking. Tony thought, too, as he played. He knew perfectly well Margarita wasn't wanting Barry at all—not the real Barry, who had grown a little pompous and important and overstout, a shade too prosperous and dogmatic during the years since Margarita dismissed him. Tony had seen him only last winter, and he knew. But Margarita didn't. She was idealizing her memory oi Barry, deliciously regretting the past as women will. And how could Tony tell her this2 Against a flesh-and-blood rival a man may fight, fair field and no favor, but against an idealized memory he may as well sheathe hi> sword. Barry was still standing between him self and Margarita after all these years.
Of course after the break with Barry he had been tree to plead his own cause, but Margarita had only looked at him with troubled blueviolet eyes and shaken her head. She never intended to marry any one—ever, so long as she lived, but just to study and study and work and work and by and by be a great sculptor. So Margarita had said, and so she had done. At least, if she were not yet a great sculptor, she was well on her way to it. as the fountain contract for the city proved "And in the meanwhile," Margarita had added, "would Tony please keep on being her ver; good friend because she needed him and loved him, only not that way?" And Tony had promised and kept his promise from that day to this. Only once in a great while, and at ever rarer and rarer intervals did he stop being a very good friend long enough to remind Margarita that he was also an incredibly constant lover. It was not that he was so monstrously magnanimous. He simply knew it wasn't any use bothering Margarita, and in the meantime he decidedly preferred being a good friend to being nothing.
