During this innocent interchange of thought, he had glanced at a very large flower-basket full of splendid roses. She had divined his thoughts, and just as a servant brought in a bottle of wine and cigarettes, she got up and went towards the roses.
("She is engaged!" he thought and felt himself superfluous.)
"I was given these by a friend on his departure," she said.
But in order to show that she was not engaged she broke off a stem carelessly. It was fastened with wire, and she had to look for her scissors. As these were in her work-basket on the lowest shelf of her work-table, she knelt down and remained kneeling. She remained in that attitude while she fastened two of the finest roses in his buttonhole, and she only needed to stretch out an arm to reach a glass of wine and drink to his health.
"'Roses and wine!' I have used that as a refrain for a ballad," he said. He thought the situation somewhat strange but insignificant in itself.
"Oh! do repeat the ballad!"
He had forgotten it.
She rose up and sat on her chair, and he persuaded her to tell him something of her life. She had early left her parents, who lived separated without being divorced, for they were Catholics. She had been educated in convent-schools in London, Paris, Italy, and elsewhere. In Paris especially, when with English ladies, she had been bothered with religion, but had finally thrown it all overboard. She certainly felt an emptiness without it, but expected, like everyone else, that some new substitute was coming into the world. Meanwhile, like her contemporaries, she devoted her energies to the deliverance of humanity from pauperism and oppression. She had superficially studied Nietzsche among others and laid him aside again after finding in him a slight corrective to over-strained expectations of universal equality.
While she was talking, he noticed that light fell through a curtain behind her back, which screened a door apparently leading into the interior of the house. Like lightning the thought struck him that he might be the object of a joke, and was to be surprised in the ridiculous position of a woman-worshipper. Or perhaps it was only for propriety's sake that communication was kept open with the main building. This wholesome doubt kept their conversation free from all tincture of flirtation, and when supper was served he reproached himself for having suspected his hostess of evil purposes or a want of trust in him.
About half-past eight he was about to go, but she only needed to express a suspicion that he was longing for the café to make him remain. About half-past nine o'clock he was going again but was kept back.