"Where are we?" he asked.
"Tite Street," said Marguerite. "That's the Tower House." And she nodded towards the formidable sky-scraper which another grade of landlord had erected for another grade of artists who demanded studios from the capitalist. Marguerite, the Chelsea girl, knew Chelsea, if she knew nothing else; her feet turned corners in the dark with assurance, and she had no need to look at street-signs. George regarded the short thoroughfare made notorious by the dilettantism, the modishness, and the witticisms of art. It had an impressive aspect. From the portico of one highly illuminated house a crimson carpet stretched across the pavement to the gutter; some dashing blade of the brush had maliciously determined to affront the bourgeois Sabbath. George stamped on the carpet; he hated it because it was not his carpet; and he swore to himself to possess that very carpet or its indistinguishable brother.
"I was a most frightful ass to leave that letter lying about!" he exclaimed.
"Oh! George!" she protested lovingly. "It could so
easily happen—a thing like that could. It was just bad luck."
A cushion! The divinest down cushion! That was what she was! She was more. She defended a man against himself. She restored him to perfection. Her affectionate faith was a magical inspiration to him; it was, really, the greatest force in the world. Most women would have agreed with him, however tactfully, that he had been careless about the letter. An Adela would certainly have berated him in her shrewish, thin tones. A Lois would have been sarcastic, scornfully patronizing him as a 'boy.' And what would Agg have done?... They might have forgiven and even forgotten, but they would have indulged themselves first. Marguerite was exteriorly simple. She would not perhaps successfully dominate a drawing-room. She would cut no figure playing with lives at the wheel of an automobile. After all, she would no doubt be ridiculous in the costume of Bonnie Prince Charlie. But she was finer than the other women whose images floated in his mind. And she was worth millions of them. He was overpowered by the sense of his good fortune in finding her. He went cold at the thought of what he would have missed if he had not found her. He would not try to conceive what his existence would be without her, for it would be unendurable. Of this he was convinced.
"Do you think he'll go talking about it?" George asked, meaning of course Mr. Haim.
"More likely she will," said Marguerite.
He positively could feel her lips tightening. Futile to put in a word for Mrs. Haim! When he had described the swoon, Marguerite had shown neither concern nor curiosity. Not the slightest! Antipathy to her stepmother had radiated from her almost visibly in the night like the nimbus round a street lamp. Well, she did not understand; she was capable of injustice; she was quite wrong about Mrs. Haim. What matter? Her whole being was centralized on himself. He was aware of his superiority.
He went on quietly: