“No, I’d rather not, Mr. Landry!”
“Don’t you want to see me again?”
“Yes, I do. Any evening—this evening, if you like.”
He wrote down the address.
“But I don’t like to let you go like this!” he said. “I don’t think you’re fit. Let me get you a taxi?”
“No, thanks, really I’m perfectly all right!”
She smiled at him to convince him. And with a long hand clasp they separated. He stood looking after her, with a pity almost beyond his endurance. So this is what she had come to! Shabby, hungry, running about looking for work to support a blind husband. He could see before him the kid in the sailor blouse, in Miss Waters’ studio....
The girl he ought to have married. He could have spared her all this. It was his fault, all of it his fault.
II
They were living in the same studio Rosaleen had once shared with Enid and Dodo. And when Landry opened the door, he was rather impressed. Perhaps he had unconsciously expected a garret and the blind man lying on a pallet. And instead saw a large and imposingly artistic room, very dark in the corners, but with a circle of light from a red-shaded lamp on a table in the centre and Rosaleen and her husband sitting beside it. The husband, too, was much better than he had expected; he was really a very gentlemanly chap, and a good talker; nothing pitiful or destitute about him. One wouldn’t have suspected him of being blind. An immense, fat fellow with a tremendous voice, and a somewhat broad sense of humour. He talked to Landry about the opera, for that was the only form of art with which the young man was acquainted. He had a very decent cigar to offer him, and he mixed an excellent cocktail.