“I don’t know,” he answered. “She speaks so little. She is like a little shy ghost—half-materialized—fearful between spirit and matter—very sweet and pathetic.”
With the last word he turned abruptly and strode out of the room. I was not so much astonished at his curt conclusion, as at a certain tell-tale cough which accompanied it.
“O, hang the fellow!” I muttered. “If he’s developed tears in his voice, I give him up.”
IV
One afternoon, accident taking me past the Nolans’ house in the Fulham Road, I was disturbed to hear Valentine’s voice hailing me from the parlour window. It was a little cheap tenement, and a curiously shabby frame to his rather distinguished figure as he stood up eagerly to stop me.
“Come in,” he said. “I want you.”
I demurred, in an instant and instinctive panic.
“What for? I’m horribly pressed. Won’t it do another time?”
“It won’t,” he answered. “It’s its way. But go on, if your need is greater than mine.”
“That’s shabby,” I thought; and yielded with the worst grace possible. He retaliated by meeting me all sweetness at the door, and conducting me into the parlour.