“But if I don’t mind—you see, it’s my business.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Then I have no right to mind. But I’m wondering where you’d have been if I hadn’t turned up.”
“I! Oh, I’d have hired a car, I suppose, and Fluffy’d have had to pay for it, or Horace, or somebody.—I wish I could remember who it was shrugged his shoulders the way you do.”
“Perhaps it was——”
He glanced at her and broke off. This didn’t seem the propitious time to assist her memory. She was frowning. He had displeased her. The flippancy of Fluffy’s way of loving had cheapened all passion for the moment.
They were coming into Bath, with its narrow streets and wide spaces, its fluted columns and Georgian mansions.
“When we get into the country on the other side,” he thought, “I’ll tell her.”
But on the other side he found that her eyes were shut She lay curled up, with her child’s face turned towards him and her cheek pillowed against her hand.
“Desire,” he whispered. “Desire.”
She sighed, but her eyes did not open.