... “What should I do with the rest of you, Eliza?”
“Would another man ask that?”
Deb was on a false trail, her manner hectic and unnatural, her senses over-stimulated. But, knowing all this, she dragged her reluctance to the gap in the last barrier—plunged through—bent her mouth to his up-turned, sleepy face——
And suddenly she remembered little Lothar von Relling ... and pleaded to whatever Justice might be presiding somewhere, that she had been generous then, had given ardently for a boy’s pleasure.... Would Justice please choose this moment to reward her?
... His fingers slowly loosened grip of her hair; it dropped heavily against his shoulders. And in swift reaction at seeing it there, Deb flung back her head, stood upright, pale and ashamed, ... over his head their eyes met in the mirror which topped the fireplace in front of them. Reaction ... she had had enough of this cramped, stuffy room, and all their cramped, stuffy passions; stupefaction of everyone’s moral sense; a sort of frowsiness; smoke and shut windows, and unaired emotions.... She wanted, at once and instantly, a wind blown in with the running tide; sanity and humour and keenness. Oh, anything but this room, at this moment, and the necessity of meeting the mirrored gaze of a man to whom she had just given herself away.
... The moment stretched, an interminable grey length. Then the music next door trickled away to silence, and it seemed as though the unsupported moment would have to trickle away with it....
“I’m only human!”—thus to himself the soldier stifled a protesting loyalty. Heavily he shifted round in his chair towards the girl, standing now so stiffly and primly erect behind him——
“Deb”....
A rap at the door. The evening had been punctuated by such staccato interruptions. This time it was Aunt Stella.
“Is Major Ames here? Yes? You’re wanted on the ’phone; trunk call, the page said. They came to look for you next door. Well, how’s the patient?” as Jenny emerged wanly from the clutch of La llorraine’s overpowering personality. “My dear child, surely you would be better inside your own bed than outside someone else’s. Off with you! Make your husband attend to the hot-water bottle ... fill it with his burning tears, if he likes. Deb, being your prying spinster aunt, it is my duty to inform you that this room has a horribly dissipated smell of fish and stove-oil and smoke, and one doesn’t put one’s hair down for the evening till all the visitors have left; I ought to fetch your grandpapa—only he’d have a stroke. Madame, Miss Verity threatens to go already, and wants to say good-bye.”