Her life now, her stage. A chair! A desk—mahogany—huge! Ink-well! Penholders! Paper! Typewriter! Waste-basket! Paste pot! Scissors! Everything and more besides—including glass partitions—think of that! Lombard Street! Trafalgar Square! Pall Mall! Piccadilly! Bond Street! Regent Street! Hyde Park! Kensington Gardens and points west and north!
That’s her stage. Can you beat it?
The War comes. It had her permission. It goes on. She let it. It stops. She was tired of it.
And yet ... one must write one’s story in one’s own way, in spite of one’s habit of prematurely spilling one’s beans. One must tell it all over in detail—but not here—not here—thank God! Not here!
CHAPTER VI
Miss Keggs again—mysteriously, unaccountably called Keggo. Why? We shall see. Rosalie met her. Keggo smiling fixedly. Had evidently been smiling for some time. In a drab street, sad drab. Forlorn drab drabs, like sad drab ghosts drably flickered in and out, itinerant drabs in drab cerements. All drab, except Keggo, who was brilliantly lit up.
CHAPTER VII
Harry Occleve, now. She knew him slightly. She despised him. Tame cat! She hated him. Beast! But he smelt nice. Yes, he did. Of peat and soap and tobacco and whisky and tweed—always so—of tweed, even when in evening dress. Odd!
She met him in her uncle’s house. Poor calf! How she despised him—sick fool! She had to pass him. Hateful! She trembled. Her knees shook. She hated him so. Then—that smell! Peat, soap, tobacco, whisky and—tweed. He in evening dress.
She caught her breath. He caught her in his arms. Her face upturned—the thing’s too poignant for the words one has! Really. But one does one’s best. Start over, then——