The doggy young man refused to come in, he had to get in his game of tennis before dinner. Shearwater climbed the stairs alone. He was taking off his hat in the little hall of his own apartment, when Rosie came out of the sitting-room with a trayful of tea-things.
“Well?” he asked, kissing her affectionately on the forehead. “Well? People to tea?”
“Only one,” Rosie replied. “I’ll go and make you a fresh cup.”
She glided off, rustling in her pink kimono towards the kitchen.
Shearwater sat down in the sitting-room. He had brought home with him from the library the fifteenth volume of the Biochemical Journal. There was something in it he wanted to look up. He turned over the pages. Ah, here it was. He began reading. Rosie came back again.
“Here’s your tea,” she said.
He thanked her without looking up. The tea grew cold on the little table at his side.
Lying on the sofa, Rosie pondered and remembered. Had the events of the afternoon, she asked herself, really happened? They seemed very improbable and remote, now, in this studious silence. She couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. Was it only this? So simple and obvious? She tried to work herself up into a more exalted mood. She even tried to feel guilty; but there she failed completely. She tried to feel rapturous; but without much more success. Still, he certainly had been a most extraordinary man. Such impudence, and at the same time such delicacy and tact.
It was a pity she couldn’t afford to change the furniture. She saw now that it wouldn’t do at all. She would go and tell Aunt Aggie about the dreadful middle-classness of her Art and Craftiness.
She ought to have an Empire chaise longue. Like Madame Récamier. She could see herself lying there, dispensing tea. “Like a delicious pink snake.” He had called her that.