The moment I opened the door, there, sure enough, was Dandy to his feet, but at the sight of my visitor he arrested all motion and glared. At this time of night I was his personal belonging. He had me to himself. There was no doubt he resented this intrusion of another person, and when he realized it was a woman, his contempt was wonderful. With just a glance at me, he turned round and stared into the fire. I never saw reproach so clearly drawn in the outline of a dog's back before.
"This is just a foretaste," thought I, "of what we shall get from Moxon," and I rang the bell.
When I turned round, she was looking all about the room with a silent wonder in her eyes. It is comfortable, I know. I have been told that. But no one has ever surveyed it with such an expression in their eyes as she had then. I felt almost ashamed of myself for calling it my own; for in that look I seemed to see all the dull, cheap finery of her own squalid little rooms in Bloomsbury.
"The world is hard on women," I said to myself, and again the name of Clarissa came like an echo into my thoughts. Clarissa in her little gown of canary-colored satin.
I was just going to ask her more about herself when she forestalled me.
"Do you live here alone?" she asked.
I nodded my head.
"All this to yourself?"
I nodded again.
"Aren't you lonely?"