"No, I've stated what all my charges are for."
"Well, then, aren't there one or two little things? Usually you young gentlemen like to have a few extras put down." And his face, that was turned to Roland's, assumed a cunning, knowing smile, an unpleasant smile, the smile of a man in a subservient position who enjoys the privilege of being able to confer a favour on his superior, and at the same time despises his superior for asking it. Roland had known that it was in exactly this way that Perkins would offer to slip through a special expense account. He knew that by accepting this offer he would place himself eternally in Perkins's debt. That, as in Gerald's case, there would be between them an acknowledged confederacy. This he would never have. He had, as a matter of fact, incurred very few of the special expenses to which Perkins referred. He had worked hard; he had been alone. Solitary indulgence is never very exciting; one wants companionship, as in everything, and so he had confined his excesses to a couple of visits to a discreet establishment in Brussels, of which he had decided to defray the cost himself.
He was able, therefore, to meet Perkins's leer with a look of puzzled interrogation.
"I don't quite understand, Mr Perkins. I think you've all my accounts there, and I owe you thirteen pounds, five shillings and threepence; perhaps you'll give me a receipt."
In the look that they exchanged as Mr Perkins respectfully handed Roland the receipt, each recognised the beginning of a long antagonism.
"Thanks very much, Mr Perkins."
Roland walked out of the room jauntily. He had had the best of the first skirmish.
This victory put him on excellent terms with himself, and, later, a bottle of excellent Burgundy at lunch wooed him to so kindly a sympathy for his fellow-beings that any leader of advanced political opinions would have found him an easy victim to any theory of world-brotherhood. As, however, no harbinger of the new world accosted him on his way from the City to Charing Cross Station, Roland was free to focus his entire sympathy upon the forlorn figure of April. He thought of her suddenly just outside Terry's Theatre, and the remembrance of his behaviour to her on the night before caused him to collide violently with an elderly gentleman who was walking in the opposite direction. But he did not stop to apologise; his sentimentality held a mirror to his guilt. What a selfish beast he had been. How miserable he must have made her. She must have so looked forward to his return. He had hardly written to her while he had been away. Poor little April, so sweet, so gentle. A wave of tenderness for her consumed him. They had shared so much together; he had confided in her his hopes and his ambitions. He worked himself into a temper of self-abasement. He must go to her at once and beg forgiveness.
He found her sitting in the arm-chair before the fire. She raised her eyes in mild amazement, surprised that he should visit her at such a time. She did not know how she should comport herself. Her dignity told her that she should rise and receive him coldly, but her instinct counselled her to remain seated and hear what he had to say. She obeyed her instinct. Roland flung his hat and stick on the cushioned window-seat and precipitated himself at her feet. She tried to push him away, but his voice murmuring the word "darling" overmastered her, and she let him put his arms round her and draw her head upon his shoulder.
"I feel such a beast, April, such a beast. All the day I have been cursing myself and wondering what on earth possessed me. I don't know what it was. But all the time I've been away I've been so looking forward to seeing you again. When I was all alone and unhappy I said to myself: 'Never mind, April's waiting,' and I thought how wonderful to see you again, and then——Oh, I don't know, but when I came here last night and found your mother here—I don't know! All the time I was dying to speak to you, and she would go on talking, and I got more and more annoyed. And then, I don't know how it happened, but I found myself getting angry with you because of your mother."