"I didn't know Mr. Tietjens had a brother. Or hardly. I've never heard him speak of you."
Mark grinned feebly, exhibiting to the lady the brilliant lining of his hat.
"I don't suppose anyone has ever heard me speak of him," he said, "but he's my brother all right!"
She stepped on to the asphalte carriage-way and caught between her fingers and thumb a fold of Christopher's khaki sleeve.
"I must speak to you," she said; "I'm going then."
She drew Christopher into the centre of the enclosed, hard and ungracious space, holding him still by the stuff of his tunic. She pushed him round until he was facing her. She swallowed hard, it was as if the motion of her throat took an immense time. Christopher looked round the skyline of the buildings of sordid and besmirched stone. He had often wondered what would happen if an air-bomb of some size dropped into the mean, grey stoniness of that cold heart of an embattled world.
The girl was devouring his face with her eyes: to see him flinch. Her voice was hard between her little teeth. She said:
"Were you the father of the child Ethel was going to have? Your wife says you were."
Christopher considered the dimensions of the quadrangle. He said vaguely:
"Ethel? Who's she?" In pursuance of the habits of the painter-poet Mr. and Mrs. Macmaster called each other always "Guggums!" Christopher had in all probability never heard Mrs. Duchemin's Christian names since his disaster had swept all names out of his head.