“You must come to me often now we understand each other....”
And again: “Yes ... often....”
CHAPTER II
I
Antonia stood in the empty room in Bayswater, reading a scrawl of explanation which Gillian had left behind for her on the dusty mantelpiece. The floor was littered with bits of straw and string, a broken teacup, some torn-up MSS., an old stocking and a tin of Bluebell polish ... her foot struck against the latter, and it rolled towards the tin fender and stopped with a forlorn clank....
“My dear—I’ve decided to go and live with Theo—why not? You’ll find me here if you come this afternoon, 54 Middle Inn Gardens. I’m leaving behind a bottle of Elliman’s Embrocation, because I haven’t room for it. Bring it along, and anything else you see lying about. Yours, Jill.”
“So she’s done it at last.” Slowly Antonia left the house, came back for the Embrocation, could not find it, and went on to Middle Inn Square with the Bluebell polish as a substitute. With an air more than ever slim and defiant and passion-free, she swung into Gillian’s presence——
“Jill!”
“It was—this—or sharing him with fifty others,” the culprit explained coolly. She did not look in the least like the famous bacteriologist, as she sat astride a wooden packing-case, tugging with giant pincers at a refractory nail; hair rakish from the frequent tumbling of her fingers; eyes two greenish slits of roguery; cigarette tilted well upwards from the corner of her mouth. She did not look like a heroine of passion either.... Her blouse was open and her sleeves rolled up, and her short navy-blue skirt was smeared with white where she had leant against some wet paint.