CHAPTER XXI
Sir Tito lived in a flat in Mayfair, on the second floor of a large corner house. On the ground floor was his studio, which had two entrances. The studio was a large, square, white room, containing a little platform for pupils. A narrow shelf ran all the way round the dado; this shelf was entirely filled with the most charming collection of English and French china, little cottages, birds and figures. Above the shelf was a picture-rail, which again was filled all the way round with signed photographs of friends. Everything in the room was white, even the piano was laqué white, and the furniture, extremely luxurious and comfortable, was in colour a pale and yet dull pink. A curtain separated it from another smaller room, which again had a separate entrance into the hall on the left, and, through a very small dressing-room, led into the street on the right side.
Sir Tito was waiting for Edith, spick, span and debonair as always (although during the war he had discarded his buttonhole). He was occupied, as he usually was in his leisure time, not in playing the piano or composing, but—in making photograph frames! This was his hobby, and people often said that he took more pleasure in the carving, cutting out, gumming and sticking together of these objects than in composing the melodies that were known and loved all over the world.
As soon as Edith came in he showed her a tiny frame carved with rosebuds.
'Regarde,' he said, his eyes beaming. 'Voilà! C'est mignon, n'est-ce-pas? On dirait un petit coeur! Ravissante, hein?' He gazed at it lovingly.
'Very sweet,' said Edith, laughing. 'Who is it for?'
'Why, it's for your mignonne, Dilly. I've cut out a photograph of hers in the shape of a heart. Gentil, n'est ce pas?'
He showed it to her with childish pleasure. Then he put all traces of the work carefully away in a drawer and drew Edith near to the fire.
'I've just a quarter of an hour to give you,' said Sir Tito, suddenly turning into a serious man of business. And, indeed, he always had many appointments, not a few of which were on some subject connected with love affairs. Like Aylmer, but in a different way, Sir Tito was always being consulted, but, oddly enough, while it was the parents and guardians usually who went to Aylmer, husbands worried about their wives, mothers about their children; to the older man it was more frequently the culprit or the confidant himself or herself who came to confide and ask for help and advice.
Edith said: