“And are you going?” said Miss Ingate, nervous and impressed.
“Of course,” Audrey answered. “Don’t they ask me to go at once? I meant to write to my cousins at Woodbridge and my uncles in the colonies, and tell them all that I was settling down at last. And I meant to look at those new flats in Park Lane with Musa. But I shall have to leave all that for the present. Also my lunch.”
“But, darling,” put in Madame Piriac, who had been standing before the dressing-table trying on a hat. “But, darling, it is very serious, this matter. What about your husband?”
“He’ll keep,” said Audrey. “He’s had his turn. I must have mine now. I haven’t had a day off from being a wife for ever so long. And it’s a little enervating, you know. It spoils you for the fresh air.”
“I imagined to myself that you two were happy in an ideal fashion,” murmured Madame Piriac.
“So we are!” said Audrey. “Though a certain coolness did arise over the luggage this morning. But I don’t want to be ideally happy all the time. And I won’t be. I want—I want all the sensations there are; and I want to be everything. And I can be. Musa understands.”
“If he does,” said Miss Ingate, “he’ll be the first husband that ever did.” Her lips were sardonic.
“Well, of course,” said Audrey nonchalantly, “he is. Didn’t you know that?... And didn’t you tell me not to forget Lady Southminster?”
“Did I?” said Miss Ingate.
Audrey heard voices in the corridor. Musa was parting from a subservient Shinner. Also the luggage was bumping along the carpet. She called her husband into No. 37 and kissed him rather violently in front of Madame Piriac and Miss Ingate, and showed him the note. Then she whispered to him, smiling.