“How old is your daughter?”
“Fourteen.”
“What is her name?”
“Gemma. She was born in Rome, where I was managing for Miss Maud Callum, the danseuse.”
Curious the intimacy Mr. May established with Alvina at once. But it was all purely verbal, descriptive. He made no physical advances. On the contrary, he was like a dove-grey, disconsolate bird pecking the crumbs of Alvina’s sympathy, and cocking his eye all the time to watch that she did not advance one step towards him. If he had seen the least sign of coming-on-ness in her, he would have fluttered off in a great dither. Nothing horrified him more than a woman who was coming-on towards him. It horrified him, it exasperated him, it made him hate the whole tribe of women: horrific two-legged cats without whiskers. If he had been a bird, his innate horror of a cat would have been such. He liked the angel, and particularly the angel-mother in woman. Oh!—that he worshipped. But coming-on-ness!
So he never wanted to be seen out-of-doors with Alvina; if he met her in the street he bowed and passed on: bowed very deep and reverential, indeed, but passed on, with his little back a little more strutty and assertive than ever. Decidedly he turned his back on her in public.
But Miss Pinnegar, a regular old, grey, dangerous she-puss, eyed him from the corner of her pale eye, as he turned tail.
“So unmanly!” she murmured. “In his dress, in his way, in everything—so unmanly.”
“If I was you, Alvina,” she said, “I shouldn’t see so much of Mr. May, in the drawing-room. People will talk.”
“I should almost feel flattered,” laughed Alvina.