She put her hand up to her neck and opened her eyes widely. “H’I sye, old sort, yer don’t mean ter tell me as I’ve lost it?”
While he was laughing at this sudden change of personality, she commenced searching her vanity-case with sham feverishness; to his amazement she drew out the missing decoration.
“Oh, ’ere it is. You’re learnin’ h’all me secrets, dearie. It ain’t wise. But, Lawd, ‘cause yer likes it and ter show yer ‘ow glad I am ter be wiv yer——”
She deliberately pinned it into place behind her ear; it hung there trembling, looking entirely natural.
Dropping her Cockney characterization, she bowed to him with bewitching archness: “Do I look like Nell Gywnn now? I expect, if she were here for an inquisitive person like you to ask, she’d tell you that hers were false.”
He loved her for her honesty; if any one had told him a month ago that so slight and foolish an action could have made him love her better, he would have laughed them to scorn.
It was intoxicating—transforming. It was as though these stone-palaces of Fifth Avenue fell back, disclosing magic woodlands—woodlands such as his father painted through whose shadows pale figures glided. People on the pavement were lovers, going to meetings which memory would make sacred. Like Arcady springing out to meet him, the Park swam into sight, tree-tufted, lagooned, embowered, canopied with the peacock-blue and saffron of the sunset.
“It’s a pity,” Desire murmured, as though continuing a conversation, “that they couldn’t have remained happy.”
“Who?”
“Those two. They were such good companions, till he began to speak of love. I was with them all summer, wherever they went We used to talk philosophy, and life, and—oh, everything. Then one day I wasn’t with them; after that our happiness stopped.”