But I will not,
never!"
She put her baby down, went into her bedroom, and changed hastily into a
teagown for the evening, ready to go downstairs. A little shepherdess
in china on the mantel-shelf attracted her attention, and she took it
in her hand. She had bought it three and more years ago, when she first
came to London, at the beginning of that time of girl-gaiety when all
life seemed a long cotillion, and she its leader. Its cool daintiness
made it seem the symbol of another world, a world without depths or
shadows, a world that did not feel--a happy world!
She had not long to wait before he tapped on the drawing-room window.
She got up from the tea-table to let him in. Why do faces gazing in
through glass from darkness always look hungry--searching, appealing for
what you have and they have not? And while she was undoing the latch
she thought: 'What am I going to say? I feel nothing!' The ardour of his
gaze, voice, hands seemed to her so false as to be almost comic; even
more comically false his look of disappointment when she said:
"Please take care; I'm still brittle!" Then she sat down again and
asked:
"Will you have some tea?"
"Tea! I have you back, and you ask me if I will have tea Gyp! Do you
know what I have felt like all this time? No; you don't know. You know
nothing of me--do you?"
A smile of sheer irony formed on her lips--without her knowing it was
there.
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