IV
The thought awoke with him next day, and seemed to write itself across the pages of his manuscript. He could not concentrate, and the ink on his dipped pen dried times without number, and not a line was committed to the paper. The hour for their united meal came, and with it a feeling of loneliness and disappointment. He made no attempt to set the table for himself, but sat staring dully at the criss-cross lines of the window transoms, fiddling aimlessly with the books and papers before him.
Once he thought he would go out, but changed his mind, and threw his hat aside before he had reached the door of the room. He tried to read, but the words were meaningless and confused, and conveyed nothing to his mind, so he dropped the book to the floor and fell back to the fruitless staring again. The words she had spoken about her childhood recurred, and with the startling reproductive faculty which he possessed he was able to picture it all very vividly. He could almost visualize the cheap short dress she would have worn when, years before, she lashed her purple top at the corner of that grey side street. The houses there would have narrow and worn steps leading down to the pavement; they would have mean areas, and windows repaired with gelatine lozenges. One of the lodgers would boast a row of geranium pots on the window-sill, stayed from falling by a slack string. No flowers would bloom in those pots—a few atrophied leaves on a brown stalk would be the only reward of the desultory waterings. In the yards at the back queer, shapeless garments would flap and fill upon a line, and gaunt cats would creep along the sooty walls. There would be querulous voices somewhere raised in argument or rebuke, and the shrill cries of children at unfriendly games. On Sundays vulgar youths with button-holes would loaf by the letter-box at the street corner, making eyes and blowing coarse kisses to the giggling girls who warily congregated on the far side. At times there would be chasings, slaps, and rough-and-tumble courtships. Old men without coats would blink and smoke complacently on the doorsteps, and women would nod and whisper of their misfortunes and their fears.
“She came from there—untouched by it all,” thought Wynne. “She deserves her place in the sun.”
A strange restlessness seized him, and he started to pace up and down.