As for Rosaleen, she said nothing. She didn’t agree with either Ambrose or Enid. She felt that she should have liked very much to have a husband and children, but that, if they never came to her, she should nevertheless manage to live a fairly pleasant and happy life. She knew, however, that this was not a “view,” and that no one would have been interested in hearing it.
In spite of his fixed idea, they not only tolerated Ambrose, but they were rather fond of him. He filled a gap. He was, in a way, their pet. They liked to see his curly head leaning against the back of their big wing chair; they liked to hear his voice, and to smell the smoke of his pipe. He was another young thing in their young world; and what in later life was to be highly unpleasant, was now, at twenty-three, harmless and laughable.
Lawrence never came. Dodo and Enid saw that there was a mystery here, and they spoke of it to each other more than once. Sometimes they laughed and sometimes they were angry. The way in which he had invited everyone to supper and then run off and left the others to pay! But they didn’t mention it to Rosaleen, and she, in despair of ever being able to explain that extraordinary evening, never brought up the subject. But they all missed him. Once in a while Miss Mell would say, “There goes Lawrence!” and they would run to the window, to see him, in his great fur-lined coat and silk hat, getting into a taxi, off to one of those teas where he so shone. He was inordinately fond of “society”: they read his name in the papers in connection with all sorts of pageants, charity balls, amateur theatricals, costume dances. He said he did it to get business, but that wasn’t quite true. He did it because he liked it; because he liked the idle and seductive women who flattered him. He had sitters, too, women who came in elegant limousines and had tea with him. He never raised his eyes to the windows above.
III
But one day early in April, just before the Spring came, he appeared, just as usual, in the doorway.
“Hello!” said Enid, carelessly. “We didn’t expect you. We haven’t any cup for your tea. We broke our only extra one this morning.”
“The obliging Dorothy Mell will go down to my room and get one,” said he, “also a package of chocolates on the table by the window. Eh?”
She did, and she brought up all Rosaleen’s work and left it secretly in the back room.
Lawrence was unusually polite. He asked them all how they were getting on, and listened with interest while they told him. They were all a little proud of their progress. Miss Mell had three big orders ahead of her. Enid was going to have an exhibition with three other young and arrogantly unpopular artists. And Rosaleen was more or less regularly employed by a magazine to do each month a page of—if you can believe that such things exist—“childrens’ fashions.”
“You’re all doing very nicely,” he said. “I’m very much pleased. I came up to give you my blessing before I go.”