The day was big with opportunity, for Sir Isaac had been unable to conceal the fact that he had to spend the morning in London. He had gone up in the big car and his wife was alone, and so, with Susan upstairs still deftly measuring for totally unnecessary hangings, Lady Harman was able to add a fur stole and a muff and some gloves to her tweed gardening costume, walk unchallenged into the garden and from the garden into the wood and up the hillside and over the crest and down to the high-road and past that great advertisement of Staminal Bread and so for four palpitating miles, to the railway station and the outer world.
She had the good fortune to find a train imminent,—the twelve-seventeen. She took a first-class ticket for London and got into a compartment with another woman because she felt it would be safer.
§10
Lady Harman reached Miss Alimony’s flat at half-past three in the afternoon. She had lunched rather belatedly and uncomfortably in the Waterloo Refreshment Room and she had found out that Miss Alimony was at home through the telephone. “I want to see you urgently,” she said, and Miss Alimony received her in that spirit. She was hatless but she had a great cloud of dark fuzzy hair above the grey profundity of her eyes and she wore an artistic tea-gown that in spite of a certain looseness at neck and sleeve emphasized the fine lines of her admirable figure. Her flat was furnished chiefly with books and rich oriental hangings and vast cushions and great bowls of scented flowers. On the mantel-shelf was the crystal that amused her lighter moments and above it hung a circular allegory by Florence Swinstead, very rich in colour, the Awakening of Woman, in a heavy gold frame. Miss Alimony conducted her guest to an armchair, knelt flexibly on the hearthrug before her, took up a small and elegant poker with a brass handle and a spear-shaped service end of iron and poked the fire.
The service end came out from the handle and fell into the grate. “It always does that,” said Miss Alimony charmingly. “But never mind.” She warmed both hands at the blaze. “Tell me all about it,” she said, softly.
Lady Harman felt she would rather have been told all about it. But perhaps that would follow.
“You see,” she said, “I find——My married life——”
She halted. It was very difficult to tell.
“Everyone,” said Agatha, giving a fine firelit profile, and remaining gravely thoughtful through a little pause.
“Do you mind,” she asked abruptly, “if I smoke?”