"Hadn't you better? You might get killed! A fellow just getting killed would not like to think he had refused to shake his brother by the hand!"
Christopher had said: "Oh . . . well!"
During her happiness over this hyperborean sentimentality he had gripped her thin upper arm. He had led her past swans—or possibly huts; she never remembered which—to a seat that had over it, or near it, a weeping willow. He had said, gasping, too, like a fish:
"Will you be my mistress to-night? I am going out to-morrow at 8.30 from Waterloo."
She had answered:
"Yes! Be at such and such a studio just before twelve. . . . I have to see my brother home. . . . He will be drunk. . . ." She meant to say: "Oh, my darling, I have wanted you so much. . . ."
She said instead:
"I have arranged the cushions. . . ."
She said to herself:
"Now whatever made me say that? It's as if I had said: 'You'll find the ham in the larder under a plate. . . .' No tenderness about it. . . ."