‘Little girl with the poor coarse hand.’
There was just sufficient light for him to make out the letters of the first line.
‘Is this the poem you have been reading, Mrs. Arbuthnot? Why, I distinctly remember your pronouncing “James Lee’s Wife” to be meaningless.’
‘I have my lesson—shall understand,’ said Dinah. ‘“James Lee’s Wife” is the story of a woman whose heart is broken.’
And she turned from him. Geoffrey could only see her face in extreme profile. The cheek with its drawn oval, the exquisite, sad lips, showed in strong relief, like a cheek, like lips of marble, against the night sky.
He first broke silence.
‘Do you care, seriously—do you care a fraction, one way or the other—about my accepting this invitation of Basire’s for Wednesday?’ he asked her. ‘Is it possible my going could be of help to you?’
A big lump in poor Dinah’s throat kept her, during some moments, from speaking. Then with trembling eagerness her answer broke forth. She cared more seriously than she could say ‘about Geoffrey’s not forsaking her.’ Gaston, of course, would be of the party, but then Gaston was so popular, so sure to be unapproachable! She would never, never want Geoffrey to martyrise himself again. It was the first great favour she had asked him. When she was once launched in the world, said Dinah, rallying with effort, she would know what to say and do and look, unhelped by a prompter.
And all Geff’s hatred for gay parties, and for men like Lord Rex Basire and his brother officers, went to the winds. That Dinah was beginning to anatomise her pain unhelped by suggestion from without, that Dinah had grasped the subtle meaning of ‘James Lee’s Wife,’ were facts that could not be lightly put aside. Her cry to himself, Geoffrey thought, was that of a child who seeks succour, from instinct, rather than from knowledge of his danger.