"So she's woken up to the fact that there may be something to be got out of you," yawned Woolf.
"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Fred. Lexie couldn't be on the make-haste. She's not made that way."
"Sounds as if she's too good and uninteresting to live."
"She isn't uninteresting. You'll like her. She's very pretty. Do be good and do me credit."
"Well ... I like that!" Woolf stared at her, half-amused.
"I mean, don't say the things you say to me. She's sensitive."
"My dear girl, don't teach me how to talk to women. Judging by what you've told me I'm inclined to think your copybook Lexie is a deep 'un. I don't think I'll come, anyway."
"Oh, but you must. I've asked her on purpose to meet you. I want her to see what a duck you are, and to like you, and not to think me bad just because I let you wipe your shoes on me."
She slipped to the ground and sat at his feet. Woolf liked her in her devoted moods. Like many another unworthy man, adulation gave him peculiar satisfaction. Maggy was rarely flippant now. She loved Woolf with a passion that almost frightened her. It was not a passion of the mind. He dominated her in other ways. She was too transparent to hide how much she cared. She gave too much. It was her pleasure, when she knew he was going to stay several hours with her, to take off his shoes and put on the pumps which with a few other things he kept at the flat.
She commenced to unlace his shoes now. Then she dragged his pumps from under the sofa, kissing them first before she put them on his feet.