Maud turned in her chair. "What is it, Martha?"
Martha was about to explain, but broke off with a gasp and drew back. There was a muttered word in the doorway, and the next moment Martha had disappeared, and a man's figure stood in the opening.
"Hullo!" said Charlie, with a smile of gay effrontery. "May I come in?"
Maud sat for a second or two as one in a trance and stared at him. It was as if the afternoon's labour had suddenly taken concrete form.
He did not wait for her greeting, but came lightly forward with hands outstretched. "Ah, queen of the roses," he said, "what a peculiarly unbecoming setting you have chosen for yourself! Why--why--what is that? A letter to me? How many times a day do you write them?"
With a lithe, elastic movement, he drew her to her feet, held her a moment, looking at her, then bent his smiling, swarthy face to hers.
"Greeting, queen of the roses!" he said.
She awoke then, came out of her trance, drew swiftly back from him. "Oh, Charlie, is it--is it really you?" she said rather incoherently. "You--how you startled me!"
He let her go, as always, at her desire, but with a faint, monkeyish grimace of disapproval. "You were always easily shocked," he said. "But on this occasion I assure you there is no need. I found myself in the neighbourhood, and thought it would be the correct thing to pay you a morning call."
His queer eyes mocked her openly as he made the explanation. She felt discomfited, painfully embarrassed, and withal conscious of an almost desperate longing to tell him to go.