"Ah!" She burst out, her features suddenly transformed by enraged protest. "Why wilt thou act thy cold man?"
He was amazed at the sudden nervous strength she showed.
"But, my little one—"
She cried:
"Why wilt thou act thy cold man? I shall become mad in this sacred England. I shall become totally mad. You are all the same, all, all, men and women. You are marvels—let it be so!—but you are not human. Do you then wish to be taken for telegraph-poles? Always you are pretending something. Pretending that you have no sentiments. And you are soaked in sentimentality. But no! You will not show it! You will not applaud your soldiers in the streets. You will not salute your flag. You will not salute even a corpse. You have only one phrase: 'It is nothing'. If you win a battle, 'It is nothing' If you lose one, 'It is nothing'. If you are nearly killed in an air-raid, 'It is nothing'. And if you were killed outright and could yet speak, you would say, with your eternal sneer, 'It is nothing'. You other men, you make love with the air of [230] turning on a tap. As for your women, god knows—! But I have a horror of Englishwomen. Prudes but wantons. Can I not guess? Always hypocrites. Always holding themselves in. My god, that pinched smile! And your women of the world especially. Have they a natural gesture? Yet does not everyone know that they are rotten with vice and perversity? And your actresses!... And they talk of us! Ah, well! For me, I can say that I earn my living honestly, every son of it. For all that I receive, I give. And they would throw me on to the pavement to starve, me whose function in society—"
She collapsed in sobs, and with averted face held out her arms in appeal. G.J., at once admiring and stricken with compassion, bent and clasped her neck, and kissed her, and kept his mouth on hers. Her tears dropped freely on his cheeks. Her sobs shook both of them. Gradually the sobs decreased in violence and frequency. In an infant's broken voice she murmured into his mouth:
"My wolf! Is it true—that thou didst carry me here in thy arms? I am so proud."
He was not in the slightest degree irritated or grieved by her tirade. But the childlike changeableness and facility of her emotions touched him. He savoured her youth, and himself felt curiously young. It was the fact that within the last year he had grown younger.
He thought of great intellectuals, artists, men of action, princes, kings—historical figures—in whom courtesans had inspired immortal passion. He thought of the illustrious courtesans who had [231] made themselves heroic in legend, women whose loves were countless and often venal, and yet whose renown had come down to posterity as gloriously as that of supreme poets. He thought of lifelong passionate attachments, which to the world were inexplicable, and which the world never tired of leniently discussing. He overheard people saying: "Yes. Picked her up somewhere, in a Promenade. She worships him, and he adores her. Don't know where he hides her. You see them about together sometimes—at concerts, for instance. Mysterious-looking creature she is. Plays the part very well, too. Strange affair. But, of course, there's no accounting for these things."
The role attracted him. And there could be no doubt that she did worship him utterly. He did not analyse his feeling for her—perhaps could not. She satisfied something in him that was profound. She never offended his sensibilities, nor wearied him. Her manners were excellent, her gestures full of grace and modesty, her temperament extreme. A unique combination! And if the tie between them was not real and secure, why should he have yearned for her company that night after the scenes with Concepcion and Queen. Those women challenged him, discomposed him, fretted him, fought him, left his nerves raw. She soothed. Why should he not, in the French phrase, "put her among her own furniture?" In a proper artistic environment, an environment created by himself, of taste and moderate luxury, she would be exquisite. She would blossom. And she would blossom for him alone. She would live [232] for his footstep on her threshold; and when he was not there she would dream amid cushions like a cat. In the right environment she would become another being, that was to say, the same being, but orchidised. And when he was old, when he was sixty-five, she would still be young, still be under forty and seductive. And the publishing of his last will and testament, under which she inherited all, would render her famous throughout all the West End, and the word "romance" would spring to every lip. He searched in his mind for the location of suitable flats.