I wanted to say "Damn the accounts"—but I let her go—I must play the tortoise in this game, not the hare. She smiled faintly—the third smile—as she made me a little bow, and walked off.
After a few paces she came back again.
"May I ask Burton for the bread ticket I lent you on Thursday," she said—"No one can afford to be generous with them now, can they!"
I was delighted at this. I would have been delighted at anything which kept her with me an extra minute.
I watched her as she disappeared down towards the Reservoirs with longing eyes, then I must have dozed for a while, because it was a quarter to five when I got back to my sitting-room.
And when I was safely in my chair there was a knock on the door, and in she came—with a cheque-book in her hand. Before I opened it or even took it up I knew something had happened which had changed her again.
Her manner had its old icy respect as of a person employed, all the friendliness which had been growing in the last two or three days had completely departed. I could not imagine why—.
She put the cheque-book open, and handed me a pen to sign with, and then I signed the dozen that she had filled in, and tore them off as I did so. She was silent, and when I had finished she took them, saying casually that she would bring the corrected chapter typed again on Tuesday, and was now going to catch her train—and before I could reply, she had gone into the other room—.
A frightful sense of depression fell upon me—What could it possibly be—?
Idly I picked up the cheque-book—and absently fingered the leaves—then my eye caught a counterfoil where I had chanced to open it. It was not in Miss Sharp's handwriting, although this was the house cheque-book which Burton usually keeps, but in my own and there was written, just casually as I scribble in my private account.—"For Suzette 5000 francs" and the date of last Saturday—and on turning the page there was the further one of "For Suzette 3000 francs" and the date of Monday!!