Impossible to say. For La llorraine was sitting on the bed, eclipsing by gesticulation and oratory, a helplessly recumbent invalid. The soldier was calmly smoking and reading in the armchair at the farther end of the room, his back to the bed, Cora among his feet. His presence in the room seemed almost part of the general acceptance. How funny, Deb thought, if they all suddenly started questioning and sorting and clearing up....
It appeared that Nadya llorraine, at least, was doing something of the sort.
“My dee-urr, now listen to me. I tell you how to win back that husband of yours. I have said to me: it is enough now, it shall end! Jenny, see how you lie here, wizout a manicure, your hair in a puzzle, a blouse that has no seduction.... And he, that fool, that booby,—shall I tell you vat vill happen? he falls into the hands of adventuresses! My dee-urr, they snap him up from you....” Sincerity of pity for the abandoned wife dominated any personal association with the said adventuresses. “They snap him up—and spit him out!” La llorraine dignified the process by accompanying pantomime, grotesquely mimicked by the enormous shadow cast on the wall behind her. “I will tell you that secret, Jenny, my dee-urr, which I ’ave learn: you must be woman to him as well as wife....” She grasped Jenny’s wrist, swooped forward, and lowered her tones to a key of thrilling confidence. She breathed in Jenny’s face. She took possession of Jenny.
Deb and the soldier were cut off to a complete isolation.
“What have you got?” she bent over his shoulder to see the title of the book he held. “Oh, that’s not fair!” indignantly. For the Chorus had been half-reading half-acting Shaw’s “Pygmalion” for their mutual amusement; and he had anticipated that portion of the play to which Deb had been secretly straining forward.
“You wanted to make sure of being Eliza in that bit where she throws the slippers, of course. You’re a shocking savage, Deb. And anyway, the part isn’t fit for any gentlewoman, and naturally falls to me. You can be Higgins.”
“I won’t be Higgins. I’ll be Eliza. You—you tempt slippers.”
“M’yes—I daresay I do. Slippers are mild. I’ll lend you my trench boots.”
“Thanks.”
“Why do you hate me so, Deb?” lazily he threw back one hand to where she was still leaning over his chair, and grasped some of her hanging hair.