The last sort of night I thought I’d have! But once back in my familiar little camp-bed in Marconi Mansions, I tucked my cotton dressing-gown round me because no sheets had been left out, and fell into that dreamless trance of utter tiredness.
I slept like a log all night.
(Next day.)
How the flat seems to have shrunk! and what a state Cicely has left it in! Has she moved all our ramshackle furniture since I was here last? Used that table to be right in the middle of the room, choking it up like this?—and where’s my dear print of “Kitty Fisher” that used to hang just there, where she’s put that framed oil-sketch of—what on earth? It looks like a study, by Blossom, of that coloured tie of Sydney’s—and there’s a little red “sold” label on it. I suppose he bought it for her out of one of the shows at the Grafton Gallery. The couch, too, is littered with books ... Marinetti ... Schnitzer ... Tangore ... Strindberg’s “Stronger Woman” ... a slender volume, “The Everlasting Mercy,” inscribed “To Cicely, from her devoted S. V.”
H’m! Cicely among the intellectuals? Well, I suppose some of us are made adaptable as water, taking the shape of any vessel we’re poured into by Man. Perhaps—perhaps I might have been the same, if——
But I do wish she’d had the souplesse or the something! to throw away, before she left, this litter of florists’ half-dead flowers, expensive stale roses and carnations, that fills up every one of our pots and crocks.
I’d better do it, I suppose....
Also I’d better wash up my breakfast-things—and Cicely’s of the day before, which are heaped upon the kitchen table.