“I have lied to him—I have deceived him. You heard what I said?” whimpered Juliette.
“You behaved superbly,” said Ilam.
“I behaved shamefully,” said the woman. “But I did it for you!”
And she looked at him over her handkerchief, with wet eyelashes.
Ilam would have gone through unutterable torture for her in that moment. It was a highly strange thing—this late coming of love into the existence of Josephus Ilam. It transformed him. It made him feel that, at fifty, he was only just beginning to grasp the meaning of life. It made him see that hitherto his days and his years had been wasted on vain things, and that the only commodity really worth having in this world was such a look as Juliette gave him out of her impassioned eyes. He could not understand what so bewitching and lively a woman as Juliette could see in a heavy, gloomy fellow like him. For the matter of that, probably no other person, save only Juliette, could understand that mystery. But then, when a woman loves a man, she sees him in a radiance shed from her own soul, and it changes him.
“My poor friend,” said Juliette, composing herself, “why do you put me in such an awkward position, coming upstairs like this, and in the middle of the day, too? You must have bribed one of the servants.”
“I did,” said Ilam.
“Well, don’t tell me which,” Juliette put in quickly.
He bent down and kissed her. Yes, this heavy and rather creaky person, who had laughed at love for several decades, bent down and kissed a pretty woman sitting on a Louis Quinze sofa; moreover, he put his arms round her. He did it clumsily, of course, but Juliette did not think so.
“I was obliged to see you,” he told her. “I couldn’t go without seeing you. Why have you so persistently kept out of my way? You were so kind that morning—when Carpentaria surprised you. Has he been bullying you?”