“That’s not the way you spoke of poor Psyche’s aspiration,” she said, “you were laughing at me then.”
A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. The woman had understood every word I said to her, understood what I meant as well as what I wanted to convey to her, two very different things. She was immensely more clever than I suspected or could have guessed.
“Mrs. Ascher,” I said, “I beg your pardon.”
“You were quite right,” she said. “That other thing isn’t Psyche. It’s just a silly little girl, the model—— There wasn’t anything about her that I could see, nothing but just a pretty body.”
So she dismissed my apology and turned to Tim Gorman’s head again. She ran her finger lightly round the rim of the saucer.
“What shall I do with this?” she said. “What is his head to stand on, to rise from? I was thinking of water-lily leaves, as if the head were emerging——”
I felt that I owed Mrs. Ascher some frankness in return for my first insult to her intelligence. Besides, I was moved. I was, as I had not been for years, emotional. Tim Gorman’s head gripped me in a curious way.
“Good God, Woman,” I said, “anything in the world but that! Wrap up that chorus girl of a Psyche in leaves if you like. Sprinkle rose petals over her or any other damned sentimentalism. But this man is a mechanic. He has invented a cash register. What in the name of all that’s holy has he got to do with water-lily leaves? Put hammers round his head, and pincers, and long nails.”
I stopped. I realised suddenly that I was making an unutterable fool of myself. I was talking as I never talked in my life before, saying out loud the sort of things I have carefully schooled myself neither to feel nor to think.
“After all,” said Mrs. Ascher, “you have an artist’s soul.”