“Not hungry.”
She guessed their shortage of funds. “You’re kinder than I thought First you prevent me from—well, from becoming seventy and then you take care of me with the last of your money. I’ve known a good many boys and men—they were all greedy, especially the men. But there’s something still more wonderful—something you haven’t done. You didn’t laugh at me when—— I’m always losing them one way or another. I’m in constant dread that Duke’ll see me without them. I know you won’t tell.”
“Has your husband got your ticket?” asked Teddy. He was wondering how they could get her to London.
She looked puzzled. “My husband?” She gave a comic little smile. “My husband—oh, yes! We can meet him at the station. I know the train by which he’ll travel.”
Then she commenced to coquette with them till they blushed. “I’m a silly old woman trying to be young, but you like it all the same.”
They did, for when she bent towards them laughing, fluttering her gay little hands, they forgot the strand of white hair and the way in which they had seen her beauty crumble.
“Ah, but when I was a girl, really a girl, not a painted husk, how you would have loved me! All the men loved me—so many that I can’t remember. What a life I’ve had! And you—you have all your lives before you.”
She made them feel that—this unaccountable old woman—made them throb to the wonder of having all their lives before them. She told them stories of herself to illustrate what that meant—risqué stories which failed of being utterly improper by ending abruptly. It was done with the gravest innocence.
They wandered out on to the promenade. The sun was going down. The waves were tipped with a flamingo redness. It was as though scarlet birds were darting so swiftly that they could not see their bodies.
“Let me be old,” she whispered, “what I am, before I see him. It’s such a rest.”