The waiter brought the Kümmel. She drank hers off at a gulp, and said:—
“It is like old times to see you, Kühler. I am glad.”
“Go on about Logan.”
“He went back to that Camden Town place, you know, and we didn’t see each other for nearly two months. It was awful. I couldn’t sleep at nights, and I knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He never slept, you know, when we had had one of our hells and I wouldn’t speak to him. He! he!” she gasped and giggled nervously at the memory.
“Go on,” said Mendel. He was icy cold. All the strange oppression that was brooding in his life seemed to gather into a thick snowy cloud about his head and to fit it like a cap of ice. “Go on.”
“Mr. Tysoe gave me money. Wasn’t it good of him? He used to see Logan. Not very often—just occasionally. Logan was painting a wonderful portrait of me, in my green dress and the corals he gave me. . . . See: I always wear them, even now.”
She thrust her hand into her bosom and produced the string of corals.
“I lived all alone and refused to see anyone. I got so thin, all my skirts had to be taken in. I knew Logan was jealous, so I didn’t see anyone, and when I heard about the portrait I knew he would come back. So I used to wear the green dress every evening and wait for him till twelve, one, two, three in the morning, all alone, in that little cottage on the Heath. . . . My, I was tired, I can tell you. But I never was one for getting up in the morning. . . . At last, one night, he came. He walked in quite quietly, as though nothing had happened. He had brought the picture with him. My word, it is good. You’d love it. He had offers for it, but he wouldn’t sell it. He said a funny thing about it. He said: ‘It’s literature. It isn’t art.’ So he wouldn’t sell it. . . . We had a glorious time—a glorious time! It was better even than the beginning.”
She stopped to linger over the memory, and she drew her hand caressingly along her thigh.
“Go on,” said Mendel, to break in upon her heavy silence.