“As though you were worrying.”
“Well, why didn’t you take a house where I could slide down the banisters?”
This time the feet came down so slowly he felt sure she wanted him to rush out. The rushing out always put him in the wrong. Well, he just wouldn’t. He would stay where he was, that would show her he was indignant. He took out page 38, put in a blank sheet and rattled the keys vigorously. But he felt cheated of a sensation. He always enjoyed bursting out, through the door at the foot of the stairs, and catching her transfixed on the landing, with the big windows behind her—half frightened, half angry. He would not have told her so, but it was partly because she was so pretty there: the outline of her comely defiant head against the light, her smooth arm emerging from the dainty sleeve that caught and held a pearly brightness. How lovely she is, he thought; it’s gruesome for her to be so pretty and talk such nonsense ... she needs someone to pump her full of indigestible compliments, that would silence her——
She was at the telephone. He could hear her talking to the grocer. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cotswold, is it too late to catch the driver? I’ve got some unexpected guests....”
He hastened into the hall. “Don’t forget the sardines,” he shouted.
She looked at him calmly with the instrument at her mouth. She seemed surprisingly tranquil.
“Never mind, then, thank you,” she said to Mr. Cotswold, in the particularly cordial and gracious voice which (George felt) was meant to emphasize the coolness with which she would now speak to him.
“If you want sardines you’ll have to go down and get them yourself. The driver’s left.”
She went into the sitting room and automatically pulled the blind halfway down. He followed her and raised it to the top of the window again. She sat on the couch, and he was surprised to see a dangerous merriment in her face.
“I suppose you think you can shut yourself in here and just let the house run itself,” she said. “Like a sardine.”