"You'll come again?" he asked.
"Of course."
After this first visit Jenny and Irene spent almost every afternoon at the flat in Greycoat Gardens. Jenny liked the sensation of Jack Danby brushing against her, of the sudden twitches he would give her hands, nor did she resent an unexpected kiss with which he once burnt her neck as she leaned over the table looking at a portfolio of Lancret's engravings.
Arthur Danby went back to Paris in advance of his brother, and Jenny fell into the habit of visiting the flat alone. Jack still never startled her with sudden importunities, never suggested the existence of another point of view beside her own. He seemed perfectly content to watch her enjoyment of his luxury and heavy comfort.
One Sunday afternoon in the middle of February—St. Valentine's Eve, to be precise—when the snowdrops drift in myriads across the London parks, Jenny went to pay her farewell visit. Jack Danby was leaving England on the next day to rejoin his brother in Paris. Before she came away from Stacpole Terrace, Jenny had arranged for Irene to pick her up in the course of the evening, so that they could go back together. For some reason she was very particular in exacting a strict promise from Irene not to fail her.
"What a fuss about nothing," grumbled her friend.
"Oh, well, Ireen, I don't like coming back alone on a Sunday night. I hate Sunday, and you know it."
Jenny, buried in a big arm-chair, dozed away the afternoon as usual and after tea sat staring into the fire, while Danby from the hearthrug assiduously stroked the slim white hand that drooped listlessly over an arm of the chair. A steady drench of rain had set in with the dusk, and, being close under the roof, they could hear the gurgle and hiss of the flooded gutters. Neither of them made a move to turn on the electric light or stir the lowering fire to flame. Danby even denied himself three or four cigarettes so that the magnetic current of sensuousness should not be interrupted. Inch by inch he drew closer to Jenny, sliding noiselessly over the thick fur of the rug. He was now near enough to kiss slowly her bare forearm and separately each supple finger. Jenny leaned back unconscious of him, though remotely pleased by his kisses, in her dull hell of memory where repressed inclinations smoldered like the fire on which her eyes were fixed. What a fool she had been for the sake of a silly powerlessness to take the plunge. It was bound to be taken in the end—with someone. But Maurice was a rotter, and would he after all have been worthy of the ultimate sacrifice? Would he not have tired and put her under an even more severe humiliation? Toys were good enough for Maurice. It was ridiculous to make life a burden for the sake of one man. Twenty-two next October. How quickly the years were flying. So, in a maze of speculation, regret and resolution, Jenny lay back in the deep arm-chair while Jack Danby drugged her with kisses. She drew her arm away at last, feeling hungry in a vague way.
"What's the time?" she asked, yawning.
"It must be after nine."