"Why not?"
"What did you let me go on talking for?"
"It was rather amusing to compare your taste with mine."
"Amusing? God!"
She lifted herself to her feet and went across to the mantelpiece, leaning her elbows on it, her head in her hands. All her exhaustion had returned. She felt a thousand times more tired in that moment than when she had rested on the landing. All that afternoon she had been walking the streets—all that evening too. From Regent Street to Oxford Street, from Oxford Street to Bond Street, from Bond Street through the Burlington Arcade into Piccadilly, then over the whole course again, smiling cheerfully at this man, looking knowingly at that—all a forced effort, all a spurious energy; and pain throbbed in her limbs—a dominant note of pain. She could feel a pulse in her brain that kept time to it. These are the ecstatic pleasures of vice—the charms, the allurements of the gay life.
At last she turned round and faced him. "I don't want any of those damned red carpets and things," she said,—"if you'll let me come and live with you—look after you."
She crossed the room and laid her hands heavily on his shoulders; bent towards him to kiss his lips.
"We should be sick to death of each other in a week," he said, meeting her eyes.
"No, we shouldn't."
He gazed steadily at her for a moment. "What makes you think I want any one to live here with me?" he asked curiously.