The bedroom seemed enormous, and the shaded electric light left caverns and spaces of darkness; the enormous bed in the middle of the room seemed without end or boundary. She heard her husband in the dressing-room, and she sat down in front of her glass with a sigh.
“You can go, Ferris,” she said to her maid, “I’ll manage for myself to-night.”
She began to brush her hair; she was angry with the things in the room, everything was so civilised and respectable. The silver on the dressing-table, a blue pincushion, the looking-glass; the blue dress, hanging over the back of a chair, seemed in its reflexion to trail endlessly along the floor. She brushed her hair furiously; it was very beautiful hair, and she wondered whether Fred had ever noticed how beautiful it was. Oh, yes! he’d noticed it in the early days; she remembered how he had stroked it and what nice things he had said. Ah! those early days had been worth having! How exciting they had been! Her heart beat now at the remembrance of them.
She heard the door of the dressing-room close, and Fred came in. He yawned; she glanced up. He was a little shrimp of a man certainly, but he looked rather nice in his blue pyjamas. He was brown, and his grey eyes were very attractive. Although she did not know it, she loved every inch of him from the top of his head to the sole of his foot, but, just now, she wanted something that he had decided, long ago, was bad for her. He had made what he would have called a complete study of her nervous system, treating her psychology as he would have treated the heroine of one of his own novels. He was quite used to her fits of sentiment and he knew that if he indulged her in the least the complaint was aggravated and she was, at once, highly strung and aggressively emotional. His own love for her was so profound and deep that this “billing and cooing” seemed a very unimportant and trivial affair, and he always put it down with a firm hand. They mustn’t be children any longer; they’d got past that kind of thing. There were scenes, of course, but it only lasted for a very short time, and then she was quite all right again. He never imagined her flinging herself into anyone else because he would not give her what she wanted. He was too sure of her affection for him.
He had noticed that these attacks of “nerves,” as he called them, were apt to come at Treliss, and he had therefore rather avoided the place, but he found that it did, in some curious way, affect him also, and especially his work. The chapters that he wrote at Treliss had a rich, decorated colour that he could not capture in any other part of the world. Perhaps it was the medieval “feeling” of the place, the gold and brown of the roofs and rocks, the purple and blue of the sea and sky; but it went, as he knew, deeper than that. That spirit that influenced and disturbed his wife influenced also his work.
They had been quarrelling for two days, and he saw with relief her smile as he came into the room. Their quarrels disturbed his work.
“Come here, Fred. Don’t yawn; it’s rude. I’ve forgiven you, although you have been perfectly hateful these last few days. I think it’s ripping of me to have anything to do with you. But, as a matter of fact, you’re not a bad old thing and you look rather sweet in blue pyjamas.”
She laid her hand on his arm for a moment and then took his hand. He looked at her rather apprehensively; it might mean simply that it was the end of the quarrel, but it might mean that she had one of her moods again.
“I say, old girl,” he said, smiling down at her, “I’m most awfully sleepy. I don’t know what there is about this place, but I simply can’t keep awake. It’s partly the weather, I suppose. But anyhow, if you don’t awfully mind I think I’ll go off to sleep. I’m jolly glad you aren’t angry any more. I know I was rather silly, but the book’s a bit of a bother just now. . . .”
He yawned again.