“Yes—no—here it is, in the ash-tray. I remembered suddenly that Cliffe and Antonia were supposed to turn up to-night, and flew home.” Gillian, yielding to natural tendencies, scattered widely her hat and gloves and coat in various portions of the room. Then chased them and retrieved them and draped them tidily on one chair, remembering that if she did not do so, nobody would. It was on understanding of the performance of this and like jobs that Winifred had been enlisted as her room-mate. Thus Gillian would be left free to be a genius. Winnie was glad to leave her own chaotic home of exacting parents and brothers. She ensconced herself tranquilly and for good on the sofa of Gillian’s furnished apartments. Having naturally a sweet disposition, she did not complain because it was a horsehair sofa and very slippery. And Gillian, having naturally a sweet disposition, enlivened by humour, continued to make brilliant effective dashes at domesticity, in the between-whiles of her other work; with the sole difference that now she cleared up for Winifred as well as for herself. She had grown fond of the plump little parasite; and took the same sort of freakish delight in her as Cliffe in Otto Redbury. And Winifred was mulishly averse from returning home; she was happier with Gillian; Gillian gave her more pocket-money than ever father did. And Gillian was famous—a personage.... It was all very nice. She was never going to leave Gillian.
Gillian began to hurl supper on to the table, smashing three plates and a jam-jar, confidently indifferent as a conjuror who smashes a watch in the knowledge that he can produce it whole again out of the top-hat of the Gentleman in the Back Row. Winifred watched her listlessly for a few moments, till it dawned upon her that knives and forks were being laid for four.
“Cliffe and Antonia aren’t coming. Didn’t I tell you? Cliffe has been here already, and he says that Deb Marcus has killed herself!”
“Then she probably has a cold in the head,” Gillian commented, with the perfect serenity of one who has often sampled the output from the Kennedy factory.
Winifred was indignant; and even roused herself to convince Gillian; who presently admitted that there “might be something in the story!”
“—Anyhow, Cliffe oughtn’t to be allowed to walk about with such a dynamo joggling loose in his pocket. Did you say he did or did not intend to explode it on the Marcus family? Because if the girl is really missing, it may frighten them.”
“He wasn’t sure. Never mind. We don’t know any of them.” And Winifred rolled off the sofa and established herself comfortably at the table.
Gillian’s eyes twinkled at her—narrow green-grey eyes set askew in an odd, thin, freckled face. Gillian’s body was also thin and small-boned to a degree. And her hair, which, by all the rights of compensation should have been a gloriously redeeming feature, was short and mouse-coloured and ragged—short with the round pudding-basin effect. The man who loved her could say that she had pretty wrists and ankles, and enormous fascination. Then, lacking material, he must perforce cease from hyperbole.
(“Go on, Theo—what next?” and he could never be quite sure if she were wilfully plaguing him, or else blind to her own shortcomings. “Theo, do you know a bit in Browning about ‘Mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs’?... Jolly line, isn’t it?... Or d’you admire the slender type more? I—I suppose you would call me slender, wouldn’t you?... Not exactly the right word?—Well, svelte then? ... like ladies in the corset advertisements. No? Theo, not—not scraggy—Oh, you wouldn’t call me scraggy, would you?...”
Then, after a pause, still persistent: “Theo—would you call me scraggy? Do tell!”