René sympathized with him. His days also had been devoted to impersonal service, and he had known the humiliation of it.
Now his only desire was to see Cathleen again. To taste once more the vigor and keen energy with which her presence filled him. The thought of her was not enough. It roused a flood of emotion too strong for his unpracticed control. He warmed to the idea of her beauty. When he was with her her beauty was axiomatic, food for rejoicing without disturbance, a mere accident, one to be thankful for, yet no more than a light bidding to the thrilling pursuit of her elusiveness.
He had arranged to see her the next day in the evening. She worked as secretary in an Art School and was not free until after five. He spent the day in happy brooding over the coming delight of seeing her, and preparing with boyish dandyism for it. He had his hair cut and his chin shaved (he had grown a mustache), and he bought a clean shirt and collar. In a book shop he saw the anthology from which they had read together and could not resist going in and buying it. He was ashamed of himself when he had done that, and hid it away among the railway porter’s rather strange collection of books—More’s Utopia, The Master Christian, Marcus Aurelius, some books of Edward Carpenter’s, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, and Arsène Lupin.
Cathleen received him in her little bed-sitting-room at the top of the big grim house, which smelled of food, ink, and washing. She had made her den very pretty, and he recognized a picture he had given her long ago, and one or two trinkets that her mother had had in her boudoir in Scotland. The walls were of plain brown paper, and there were gay-colored stuffs by the windows and on the sofa.
She took in his spruceness at a glance, was pleased by it, and laughed.
“I must give you a buttonhole,” she said, “as I used to do. You look so wonderfully the same.”
René trembled as she came to him and pinned a flower in his coat.
“Sit down,” she said. “I think we can talk better here.”
René sat awkwardly on the sofa, she by the fire, which she stirred with the poker.
“Well,” she said, “I feel rather a beast. I couldn’t help flirting with you a little yesterday. That’s got to stop.”