He liked to seem a little eccentric and managed it simply enough while in America. He wore no hat, and liked to be found reading the London Times, under a park lamp at three in the morning.
Lydia Passova was never seen with him. She seldom left her shop, however, she was always pleased when he wanted to go anywhere: “Go,” she would say, kissing his hand, “and when you are tired come back.”
Sometimes she would make him cry. Turning around she would look at him a little surprised, with lowered lids, and a light tightening of the mouth.
“Yes,” he would say, “I know I’m trivial—well then, here I go, I will leave you, not disturb you any longer!” and darting for the door he would somehow end by weeping with his head buried in her lap.
She would say, “There, there—why are you so nervous?”
And he would laugh again: “My father was a nervous man, and my mother was high-strung, and as for me——” He would not finish.
Sometimes he would talk to her for long hours, she seldom answering, occupied with her magnifying glass and her rings, but in the end she was sure to send him out with: “That’s all very true, I have no doubt; now go out by yourself and think it over”—and he would go, with something like relief, embracing her large hips with his small strong arms.
They had known each other a very short time, three or four months. He had gone in to pawn his little gold ring, he was always in financial straits, though his mother sent him five pounds a week; and examining the ring, Lydia Passova had been so quiet, inevitable, necessary, that it seemed as if he must have known her forever—“at some time,” as he said.
Yet they had never grown together. They remained detached, and on her part, quiet, preoccupied.
He never knew how much she liked him. She never told him; if he asked she would look at him in that surprised manner, drawing her mouth together.