“Why not? I’m a relic of her childhood.”
“It makes you sound like Stonehenge.”
“You strive rather after effect, don’t you?” He slings this at her, himself striving after effect.
“Of course. Would you have me display at once all the domestic virtues?”
“You haven’t any,” tauntingly. “Not one. Other girls can cook nothing but an omelette. You, I’m sure, can cook nothing at all. It must be a proud boast. I hate talking while I dance, don’t you?”
In silence they finish the waltz. Then Stuart sweeps her through a pair of velvet hangings, down two rooms, and to a sofa at the far end of a third, before she is well aware of his intentions. She takes a sidelong survey of his outward marks: features that vie for room with his monocle and quickly-changing expression, giving an effect to his face of overcrowding; a mouth corner-tilted and impish, such as is sometimes perceived in a small street-arab, but mostly in a leprechaun, who can only be met hammering shoes on moor and crag by moonlight. She notes further that his jaw is lean, with the forward bent of a runner; and his head, which by dint of hard brushing and grooming gives at first an effect of conventional sleekness, is in reality a most rebellious and intricate affair, no hair growing in precisely the same direction as its fellow, but each insisting it will beat out like Bret Harte’s pioneer, “a way of his own, a way of his own!”
From the distant ballroom, snatches of “God save the King” drift and die and are re-born, with an effect of inexpressible melancholy. And, sighing, Stuart relinquishes desire to show the girl all his sides before dawn—philosophical, tender, childish, manly, sporting, whimsical, or political,—resigns himself to proving merely that he is original.
“You can never get away from your likeness to a Reynolds’ Angel,” à propos of nothing; “because there are five of them, so that if the expression should miss one, it will hit the next; I’m sorry for you, of course, but there is nothing to be done about it. Do you live anywhere? Forgive me for these astounding acrobatics, but I’m so afraid you will be fetched by your nurse Rose-Marie; I heard you remark she was growing fractious.”
“I live in Thatch Lane with an aunt. My mother is dead, and my father unmentionable, to save you from the agonies of a tactless question.”