Shearwater got up from his chair before the writing-table, lurched pensively towards the door, bumping into the revolving bookcase and the arm-chair as he went, and walked down the passage to the drawing-room. Rosie did not turn her head as he came in, but went on reading without changing her position, her slippered feet still higher than her head, her legs still charmingly avowing themselves.
Shearwater came to a halt in front of the empty fireplace. He stood there with his back to it, as though warming himself before an imaginary flame. It was, he felt, the safest, the most strategic point from which to talk.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
“Le Sopha,” said Rosie.
“What’s that?”
“What’s that?” Rosie scornfully echoed. “Why, it’s one of the great French classics.”
“Who by?”
“Crébillon the younger.”
“Never heard of him,” said Shearwater. There was a silence. Rosie went on reading.
“It just occurred to me,” Shearwater began again in his rather ponderous, infelicitous way, “that you mightn’t be very happy, Rosie.”