She knew exactly the shop in Oxford Street where the stuff for the curtains might be best obtained.
§ 17
One night Marjorie had been sitting musing before the stove for a long time, and suddenly she said: "I wonder if we shall fail. I wonder if we shall get into a mess again when we are back in London.... As big a mess and as utter a discontent as sent us here...."
Trafford was scraping out his pipe, and did not answer for some moments. Then he remarked: "What nonsense!"
"But we shall," she said. "Everybody fails. To some extent, we are bound to fail. Because indeed nothing is clear; nothing is a clear issue.... You know—I'm just the old Marjorie really in spite of all these resolutions—the spendthrift, the restless, the eager. I'm a born snatcher and shopper. We're just the same people really."
"No," he said, after thought. "You're all Labrador older."
"I always have failed," she considered, "when it came to any special temptations, Rag. I can't stand not having a thing!"
He made no answer.
"And you're still the same old Rag, you know," she went on. "Who weakens into kindness if I cry. Who likes me well-dressed. Who couldn't endure to see me poor."
"Not a bit of it. No! I'm a very different Rag with a very different Marjorie. Yes indeed! Things—are graver. Why!—I'm lame for life—and I've a scar. The very look of things is changed...." He stared at her face and said: "You've hidden the looking-glass and you think I haven't noted it——"