THIRST
"A little, passionately, not at all?"
She casts the snowy petals on the air. . . .
—Villanelle of Marguerites.
Lothian had taken chambers for a short time in St. James' and near his club. Prince, the valet, had found the rooms for him and the house, indeed, was kept by the man's brother.
Gilbert would not stay at the club. Rita could not come to him there. He wanted a place where he could be really alone with her.
During the first few days, though they met each night and Gilbert ransacked London to give her varied pleasure, Rita would not come and dine in his chambers. "I couldn't possibly, Gilbert dear," she would say, and the refusal threw him into a suppressed fever of anger and irritation.
He dare show little or nothing of it, however. Always he had a haunting fear that he might lose her. If she was silent or seemed cold he trembled inwardly and redoubled his efforts to please, to gratify her slightest whim, to bring her back to gaiety and a caressing, half lover-like manner.
She knew it thoroughly and would play upon him like a piano, striking what chords she wished.
He spent money like water, and in hardly any time at all, the girl whose salary was thirty-five shillings a week found a delirious joy in expensive wines and foods, in rare flowers, in what was to her an astounding vie de luxe. If they went to a theatre—"Gilbert, we simply must have the stage box. I'm not in the mood to sit anywhere else to-night,"—and the stage box it was.