She was exultant at having at last urged him to a personal reflection. “Because you don’t take enough notice of me,” she replied, in a freakish impulse of candour.
“Dear Eliza, isn’t my step bent straight for this room, when I enter the house?”
“That’s because of—Cora. Because we make you comfortable.”
“I suppose it is. Funny hair you’ve got, Eliza; like a strong, stormy black sea. I thought women’s hair was always fluffy and soft.”
“As one woman’s was? ...” flitted through Deb’s mind. But she did not say it.
He still examined with minute interest the thick tress which lay across the palm of his hand. “To a man of ingenuity and resource, it would be useful for all sorts of things if one were wrecked on an island; Eliza, I wish I could be stranded on a desert island with your hair.”
“With ... only my hair?” She was breaking through it now, that nameless barrier which her nameless creed had set up; useless barrier, Jenny had shown her.... Yes, but Jenny was different. Because she was married?—well, because she was different. Because she let her passions bubble over when and where and how she chose ... unruly, undisciplined Jenny. But Deb had promised herself to compete with Jenny this time.... A pulse ticked in each wrist—two frantic little clocks. On the other side of the wall someone—Antonia probably—was playing Debussy ... mournful, soul-flattening discordances ... La llorraine’s rush of inaudible speech still expounded man and the ways of man:
“And I say to ’im, that minute ago even, my dee-urr: ‘You should kneel to your wife like a thief to a goddess, for you ’ave r-r-robbed ’er of all ’er gifts!’ Ha! ’e did not like that, Jenny, I tell you. He sulks now in his room, the booby——”
“Well, it was rude, considering he was your guest,” from Jenny, in shrill defence of her male property.