"Not at all, very natural, I'm sure. You can have the whole lamp, Miss Grey, but you must let me clean it. It might smell. Yes, please, I insist. You must sit down here in the light while I do it. I'm afraid it's dweadfully smoky. Killigrew, do open the window—"
So he fussed, while Miss Grey, with a murmured thanks, sank into the chair Ishmael shyly offered her and waited very simply, her hands folded on her lap. There was a simplicity, a lack of any self-consciousness, in her whole manner, so Ishmael, used to Phoebe and Vassie—neither of whom was the same in men's company that she was out of it—told himself. This girl seemed divinely unaware even of any strangeness in the position in which she now found herself—the unawareness of an angel…. When Killigrew talked to her she answered frankly and freely, almost with the confidence of a child. She could not be more than twenty, Ishmael decided, and with all her maturity of build had a childish air. The fashions of the day were not conducive to youthfulness of appearance; but not even the long full skirts trimmed with bands of black velvet or the close-fitting bodice could make her seem other than a schoolgirl, while the hair worn brushed loosely back from the forehead instead of brought down in sleek waves gave her a look that reminded him of someone, though he could not remember whom. Then with a sudden flash he remembered it was Hilaria, little Hilaria Eliot—she too had that look which, being in the middle of the period himself, he did not recognise as alien to its stamp, but which was so conspicuously so that women might have called it dowdy and men individual. But this girl was feminine, that was obvious in the timid shyness even of her trusting attitude.
Oddly enough—or oddly as if seemed to Ishmael, who was wont to be in the background when out with Killigrew—it was to him that she chiefly addressed herself. Killigrew sat watching as from general remarks of great propriety about the weather and Ishmael's opinions of London as a place to visit they passed to her views on it as a place in which to live. These were, apparently, not over favourable.
"One always feels a stranger, in a way, if one was born and brought up in the country, doesn't one? I feel that every day. I've never got over expecting to see the big elm outside my window when I wake, and instead I see the chimney-pots. And then I may just be getting used to it when there arrives a letter from Papa telling me how it all looks at home—all the silly little things about the flowers and the chickens and the old people in the parish, and then I have to start all over again."
There was a strain of wistfulness in her full voice, but her eyes were limpidly unconscious of it, with their candid glance that suggested courage and even a certain gaiety. If it had not been for that look in her eyes she would have seemed doll-like; even as it was in the purely physical aspect of her there was a waxen dollishness which was at once disconcerting and attractive. It was obvious that Carminow, who presumably knew her, was passionately convinced that she was what he would have called "all right"; that he was considerably more fond of her than he would have admitted was equally obvious. To him that odd dollishness of aspect was just the sweet pink and white of a naïve young girl, but to Killigrew it gave, by its very completeness, a hint as of something oddly inhuman, or at least unawakened, as though she had been a puppet, a pretty puppet that walked and spoke and said the right things. It was not so much any lack of intelligence in what she said as in her slow speech and her whole look. Her skin was so white—and Killigrew thought he knew if Ishmael did not how that whiteness was attained—except for a slight pink flush below extravagantly calm eyes of a clear pale grey; the modelling of the face was wide across brow and cheekbones and across the jaw on the level of the too-small mouth; then came a dimpled chin, short and childish, as was the tip-tilted nose. It was the type of face which, in its broad modelling of planes and petal-fineness of edges, suggests a pansy. The blondness of her—ashen-dead fairness of hair and pale skin with those pellucid eyes beneath dust-brown brows—all united in an effort of innocence that surpassed itself and became the blandness of a doll. She was curiously immobile, sat very quietly, and moved slowly, graceful in the way that a heavily-built puma is graceful, because of the thoroughly sound construction of her bones and muscles. Killigrew, as he watched her, was vastly intrigued by what he phrased to himself as the "innocent sweet corruption of her look." For with all that dollish look, perhaps because of it, it was possible, so Killigrew thought, to imagine her being very bad with the help of that protective mask. It was also compatible with an Undine-like soullessness, a cold clearness of outlook, or a slightly heavy if sweet stupidity. He thought it quite likely she might have all the virtues except a naturally good complexion, but he wondered about her, seeing her charm without feeling it.
The lamp was ready all too soon, and the lucky Carminow had the best right to carry it upstairs for her. She shook hands with both his friends as she said good-night, and Ishmael noticed how straightly she looked from her equal height into his eyes as her hand lay in his. Then the door swung to, but without closing, and in a moment there came the low sound of her voice from the landing above.
"Mr. Carminow…." she was saying—and the words, excepting just now and again, were audible to the two in the sitting-room—"I hope—I don't know what your friends must think. Do tell them, will you, that I'm not in the habit of running down to your room like that? Mr. Ruan looks so good. I wouldn't like him to think—"
"No one thinks anything like that; they couldn't, I assure you. Do believe me, Miss Grey. You won't sleep if you worry, you know. Promise me to believe me. I'll say something to them if it'll make you any happier."
"Will you? Then I'll promise too. I can take the lamp now. And—thank you, Mr. Carminow."
Down in the sitting-room when Carminow entered it again there was a moment or two of silence.