“Largely. I am—a sort of author. Perhaps you know my books. Not very important books—but people sometimes read them.”
The rose-pink of the lady’s cheek deepened by a shade. Within her pretty head, her mind rushed to and fro saying “Brumley? Brumley?” Then she had a saving gleam. “Are you George Brumley?” she asked,—“the George Brumley?”
“My name is George Brumley,” he said, with a proud modesty. “Perhaps you know my little Euphemia books? They are still the most read.”
The lady made a faint, dishonest assent-like noise; and her rose-pink deepened another shade. But her interlocutor was not watching her very closely just then.
“Euphemia was my wife,” he said, “at least, my wife gave her to me—a kind of exhalation. This”—his voice fell with a genuine respect for literary associations—“was Euphemia’s home.”
“I still,” he continued, “go on. I go on writing about Euphemia. I have to. In this house. With my tradition.... But it is becoming painful—painful. Curiously more painful now than at the beginning. And I want to go. I want at last to make a break. That is why I am letting or selling the house.... There will be no more Euphemia.”
His voice fell to silence.
The lady surveyed the long low clear room so cleverly prepared for life, with its white wall, its Dutch clock, its Dutch dresser, its pretty seats about the open fireplace, its cleverly placed bureau, its sun-trap at the garden end; she could feel the rich intention of living in its every arrangement and a sense of uncertainty in things struck home to her. She seemed to see a woman, a woman like herself—only very, very much cleverer—flitting about the room and making it. And then this woman had vanished—nowhither. Leaving this gentleman—sadly left—in the care of Mrs. Rabbit.
“And she is dead?” she said with a softness in her dark eyes and a fall in her voice that was quite natural and very pretty.
“She died,” said Mr. Brumley, “three years and a half ago.” He reflected. “Almost exactly.”