In performing this little action Pouchée artfully chose such a point that Marjorie, shadowed herself, might gain a full view of Geff Arbuthnot’s face.
‘Your fire makes one feel we are in November.’
He stretched his hands forth to the blaze. ‘How delightful your salon is to-night, Mademoiselle Pouchée.’
Coming in from the mud and darkness, the dreary prose of Cambridge thoroughfares, he might well think so. The room was redolent with the odour of Marjorie’s discarded violets; morsels of muslin embroidery, a thimble never worn by Pouchée’s finger, lay on a work-table near Geff’s elbow. The warmth, the grace, the nameless sweetness of a young girl’s presence, were everywhere.
‘How well that Guernsey photograph looks in its old place!’ Could it be that Geoffrey shrank from pronouncing the name of Tintajeux? ‘You shall not dismantle your walls again for whim of mine.’
Pouchée stirred the fire into a keener flame. She gave a discreet little cough.
‘We will settle about that another day, sir. I wait impatiently your news. Something good about yourself, I hope?’
‘Something very good.’ His face brightened. ‘You know our poor patient down in Barnwell?’
‘Our Irish bargee, O’Halloran, the dingiest character even Barnwell can show.’