I think the drawing-room is the biggest room I have ever been in; it is so long and narrow; the walls are white panels, and the carpet pale grey, and the chintz is the same grey with a little fierce blue lobelia bobbing about on it, and there is priceless blue Chinese porcelain everywhere, and a wonderful and enormous grand piano, and there were great bowls of white jasmine everywhere.
I sat down at the piano and ran my hands over the keys, and Cheneston spoke.
"Pam—please don't sing. I—I beg you not to sing."
"I won't if you don't wish it."
"Thank you."
But after they had brought in the coffee old Mrs. Cromer's nurse came and begged me to leave the door open and sing. I looked at Cheneston.
"Yes," he said. "Tell mother Miss Burbridge will sing." Then he looked at me; his face was very white. "Can I fetch you music, Pam?" he said.
"No, I don't need it, thank you."
He opened the french-windows, and the air that blew from the sea and the red fields of Devon swept into the room in a cloud of jasmine scent, and through the diamond panes I saw the stars twinkling—and suddenly I lost Pam Burbridge and the pretty room. I became something that had kinship with the stars and the hot scent of jasmine, something that was houseless and homeless and free; I walked beside Cheneston through Elysian fields, I talked to him and had no need of words. We were mates, we who had never been lovers.
I stopped. I was quite alone, and someone was rapping on the floor, and I heard the nurse's voice over the stairs. "Miss Burbridge, will you come?"