“I don’t know. Up and down streets. It’s—it’s blinding, it’s stifling——”
“The fog is,” I said quickly. But we didn’t mean the fog.
He let himself down into the low wicker chair. I stood leaning against the sill, watching him.
“You’re just dead tired,” I said.
He nodded. Then, as if something in my words had stung him—
“Where else? I’ve always come here. Every month. It was natural to come.”
“But now” I said (and I was so urgent with him because of all their talk that drummed still in my mind like a wasps’ nest)—“I’d go away if I were you. What good does it do you? They talk. It’s—it’s rather hateful. I’ve been listening. I’d go.”
“Where?” he said again. And I—
“Haven’t you anyone—at home?”
But as I asked I knew that he hadn’t. He had the look. Oh, he wore good clothes and I knew he wasn’t poor. But it was written all over him that he looked after himself and did it expensively and badly. He had, too, that other look that goes with it—of a man who has never found anyone more interesting to him than himself. And the queer part was that it didn’t seem selfish in him—and I’m sure it wasn’t. It was just like the way a child takes you for granted, and tells you about its own big affairs, and never guesses that you have your own little affairs too. I suppose it was a fault in him; but it made me like him. And he talked to me simply and almost as if he needed helping out; as if he’d been just anybody. I never had to help out anyone before: it had always been the other way round. I’d thought, too, that celebrated people were always superior and brilliant and overwhelming, like Anita and Mr. Flood. But he wasn’t. He was as simple as A, B, C. I liked him. I did like him. I felt happier, more at peace, standing there with him than I had felt since I had been in Anita’s house. I think he would have gone on talking to me too, if it hadn’t been for the Baxter girl. She spoilt it. She tilted back her chair, yawning, and so caught sight of us, and laughed, and leaning over to Miss Howe, whispered in her ear. She was a crazy girl. At once I got up and came across to them, panic-stricken, hating her. I had to. I didn’t want him worried, and you never knew what hateful thing the Baxter girl wouldn’t say, and think that she was pleasing you.