He spoke in a low voice without raising his eyes. “Wasn’t it—isn’t it—rather risky to come here—like this, now?” After all, how absurd it was! What heaps of plays he had seen with their third act just like this. It was all shadowy, fantastic—the woman, the place. He wanted to sleep.
She laughed. “Risky? Why, no. Fred’s in London. Nobody else is likely to bother. But Jim, what’s the matter? What’s happened? Why are you suddenly like this? Don’t you think it’s a little unkind on our last evening, the last chance that we shall get of talking? I don’t want to be a nuisance or a worry——” She paused with a pathetic little catch in her voice, and she let her hand fall sharply on to the silk of her dress.
He tried to pull himself together, to realise the place and the woman and the whole situation. After all, it was his fault that she was there, and he couldn’t behave like a cad after arranging to meet her; and she had been awfully nice during these weeks.
“No, please.” He raised his eyes at last and looked at her. “I’m tired, beastly tired; or I was until you came. Don’t think me rude, but I’ve had an awfully exhausting day, really awfully exhausting. But of course I want to talk.”
She was looking so charmingly pretty. Her colour, her beautiful shoulders, the way that her dress rose and fell with her breathing—a little hurriedly, but so evenly, like the rise and fall of some very gentle music.
He smiled at her and she smiled back. “There, I knew that you wouldn’t be cross, really; and it is our last time, isn’t it? And I have got a whole lot of things that I want to say to you.”
“Yes,” he said, and he leaned back in his chair again, but he did not take his eyes off her face.
“Well, you know, for a long time I wondered whether I would come or not; I couldn’t make up my mind. You see, I’d seen nothing of you at all during these last days, nothing at all. Perhaps it was just as well. Anyhow, you had other things to do; and that is, I suppose, the difference between us. With women, sentiment, romance, call it what you like, is everything. It is life; but with you men it is only a little bit, one amongst a lot of other things. Oh! I know. I found that out long ago without waiting for anyone to tell me. But now, perhaps, you’ve brought it home to me in a way that I hadn’t realised before.”
He was going to interrupt her, but she stopped him.
“No, don’t think that I’m complaining about it. It’s perfectly natural. I know—other men are like that. It’s only that I had thought that you were a little different, not quite like the rest; that you had seen it as something precious, valuable. . . .”