“Everybody is tired at times—and—and—I always wanted tea-gowns.”
“I’ll go at once to her ladyship’s—”
“Yes, do. No, go to the big French houses—I’ve given Lady Dark so much trouble. Buy me two, ready-made. A pale green one, and a white one with sapphire-blue ribbons—or cornflower blue. It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, mum.” And Collins went on her errand joyfully.
“Now what a fool I am,” thought Julia. But she did not recall the maid. She carried the forgotten typewriter into the next room and deposited it on the bed, then sat down and reflected that Swani Dambaba, her Hindu master, had often reminded her there was nothing like a short, but thorough, vacation from the mind’s accustomed travail, to recuperate the mental faculties and prepare them for still more arduous labors. She had thought of one thing only for four years. This, no doubt, was the opportunity her mind had impatiently awaited, for its Suffrage activities had lain down to sleep without a preliminary yawn. Her secretary had come and gone, mystified.
Promptly on the stroke of eleven she answered a sharp rap and extended both hands with a cold friendly brightness she could always adjust like a visor. Tay flung his hat on a chair and shook her hands for quite a minute. Obviously his diffidence was a thing of overnight, for it was not in evidence as he smiled down upon her with his keen clever eyes.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “but you look good to me. You haven’t changed a bit. To tell the truth, if business hadn’t forced me to come over here, I don’t believe I’d ever have come—was so afraid you’d be old and ugly —”
“Old and ugly!” cried Julia, indignantly. “When I’m only—” She paused abruptly. Tay knew that she was thirty-four, and she was willing that he should know, but, quite like any woman after twenty-eight, she couldn’t force the combination past her lips.
“I know, but you’ve worked like a man, and been in so many free fights. Batting cops over the head, sitting on roofs in the rain to devil politicians at the psychological moment, to say nothing of gaol, doesn’t improve women, as a rule. I was almost certain you would have lost your complexion—and your hair!”
“Well, I haven’t. Do sit down. Will you smoke?”