Silence fell between them.
‘Forgive me, Mrs. Fairfield,’ broke out Redshawe after a while. ‘I shouldn’t have blundered in with my self-pity. But mine isn’t a boyish fancy or any rot of that kind. To me she is just pure beauty. I’ve always worshipped beauty. I could have poured out my life like wine at her feet.’
‘And to me,’ said Sheila, ‘she was a little helpless thing that fumbled at my breasts. She’s been my whole life for twenty-six years. I waited for her coming as for the coming of God.... Let’s go in: they’ll be waiting supper for us!’
Sadly, ‘Life seems to promise so much,’ Redshawe began, with the unique solemnity of adolescence. ‘Beauty stands in the doorway and beckons ... and when we follow she’s vanished.’
‘Lucky boy!’ with a wan smile Sheila said to him. ‘You’ll be busy writing lyrics about this to-morrow.’
The door opened noiselessly, and in the doorway, two slender white fingers resting on the handle, stood Rosemary, lightly poised on her toes as though for celestial flight. Her eyes sparkled with an almost stellar radiance; her cheeks were delicately flushed, and her lips a little parted, like the petals of an awakening rosebud. Redshawe, abashed at the memory of having criticized her for inhumanity, worshipped once more her divinity, lapsed into mute adoration; and Sheila held her breath, telling herself: ‘I may never see her stand like that again.’
‘Supper’s ready, mother. I’m sure you’re both hungry.’ The words did but tremble in the air for a moment, and then became no more than an imperishable memory for mother and lover.
‘Do let me take you in, Mrs. Fairfield,’ said Redshawe, affectionately, compassionately gallant; and as Sheila, a little tremulous but gravely mistress of herself, took the arm he offered, ‘Thank you, my dear,’ she rewarded him. But in her heart she was saying: ‘The last supper.’
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.