“What manager?” he re-echoed. “My manager. The manager of my cinema.”
Miss Pinnegar looked at him, and looked at him, and did not speak. In that moment all the anger which was due to him from all womanhood was silently discharged at him, like a black bolt of silent electricity. But Miss Pinnegar, the engine of wrath, felt she would burst.
“Cinema! Cinema! Do you mean to tell me—” but she was really suffocated, the vessels of her heart and breast were bursting. She had to lean her hand on the table.
It was a terrible moment. She looked ghastly and terrible, with her mask-like face and her stony eyes and her bluish lips. Some fearful thunderbolt seemed to fall. James withered, and was still. There was silence for minutes, a suspension.
And in those minutes, she finished with him. She finished with him for ever. When she had sufficiently recovered, she went to her chair, and sat down before her plate. And in a while she began to eat, as if she were alone.
Poor Alvina, for whom this had been a dreadful and uncalled-for moment, had looked from one to another, and had also dropped her head to her plate. James too, with bent head, had forgotten to eat. Miss Pinnegar ate very slowly, alone.
“Don’t you want your dinner, Alvina?” she said at length.
“Not as much as I did,” said Alvina.
“Why not?” said Miss Pinnegar. She sounded short, almost like Miss Frost. Oddly like Miss Frost.
Alvina took up her fork and began to eat automatically.