[XIII]
The next day, Violet, entering the brilliant room, gazed first about it and then at Leilah.
“Aurelia is not here? That’s odd. She is simply horrid but so reliable. You don’t mind my having told her to meet me?”
Leilah sighed. “I am getting so that soon I shan’t mind anything.”
Violet, seating herself, nodded vivaciously.
“I call that very fine. But there is something finer. Never mind anybody. Silverstairs now——” and as the lady spoke she summoned a smile feline and Cheshire—“he fancied I would be a good, obedient little wife. Instead of which he is a good, obedient big husband.” In entire self-appreciation she exhibited the tip of her tongue and moistened her lips with it. “It takes us, doesn’t it? But forgive me, dear, us is perhaps an exaggeration. I am afraid you have made rather a mess of things. Now what are you going to do?”
Without replying, Leilah looked away. During the night she had barely slept. The incident in the restaurant, events that had preceded it, anterior complications, subsequent developments, these things, like the Bohemians at Paillard’s, had stormed at her, attacked her fibres, wrenched her nerves, striating the darkness of her room with variations on the tragedy of her life.