“Is that all after a whole month?”
“A whole month!” His face seemed set in a mask. “To me it has seemed a century.”
For the first time she dimly realized what he had suffered. She drew her fingers across his cheek. Her hands ran over him like white mice. The weariness in his way of talking frightened her. “I’m—I’m sorry that I’m not always nice. It wasn’t quite nice of me to leave you, was it?”
His lips grew crooked at her understatement “From my point of view it wasn’t.”
She thought for a moment; she was determined not to acknowledge that he was altered. Slipping her arm into his comfortably, she led him across the room. “Let’s sit down. I’ve so much to tell you.”
He helped her to push a couch to the window that they might shut out the sight of the room’s disorder. When she had seated herself in a corner, she patted the place beside her. He sat himself at the other end and gazed out at the gray-gold stretch of river, where steamers churned back and forth between Greenwich and Westminster.
“Fluffy’s going to America; we ran over from Paris to get some clothes. It’s all rubbish to get one’s clothes in Paris; London’s just as good and not one-half as expensive. She has to return to Paris in a day or two to see a play. Simon Freelevy thinks it will suit her. After that she sails from Cherbourg.—Meester Deek, are you interested in Fluffy’s doings?”
“I was looking at the river. I scarcely heard what you were saying.”
“Well, then, perhaps this will interest you. She says that, if I like, she’ll see that I get a place in her company at The Belshassar.—Still admiring the view?—I wish you’d answer me sometimes, Teddy.”
“So you’re going to become another Fluffy?”