In truth the wind was not blowing nor was anything stirring. The trap-door fell back with a heavy swaying motion and a creaking sigh as though some one quite close at hand had suddenly fainted. Henry walked down the passage and found that it led to a dusky thick-paned window that overlooked a square just behind the yard through which he had come. This was a very small and dirty square, grimy houses overlooking it and one thin clothes-line cutting the light evening sky now light topaz with one star and a cherry-coloured baby moon. To the right of this window was another heavily curtained and serving no purpose as it looked out only upon the passage. Beside this window Henry paused. It was formed by two long glass partitions and these were not quite fastened. From the room beyond came voices, feminine voices, one raised in violent anger. A pause—from below in the yard some one called. A step was ascending the stair.
From within voices again and then a sound not to be mistaken. Some one was slapping somebody's face and slapping it with satisfaction. A sharp cry—and Henry pushing back the window, stepped forward, became entangled in curtains of some heavy clinging stuff, flung out his arms to save himself and fell for the second time within an hour and on this occasion into the heart of a company that was most certainly not expecting him.
II
He had fallen on his knees and when he stumbled to his feet his left heel was still entangled with the curtain. He nearly fell again, but saved himself with a kind of staggering, suddenly asserted dignity, a dignity none the easier because he heard the curtain tear behind him as he pulled himself to his feet.
When he was standing once more and able to look about him the scene that he slowly collected for himself was a simple one—a very ugly room dressed entirely it seemed at first sight in bright salmon pink, the walls covered with photographs of ladies and gentlemen for the most part in evening dress. There were two large pink pots with palms, an upright piano swathed in pink silk, a bamboo bookcase, a sofa with pink cushions, a table on which tea was laid, the Pomeranian and—three human beings.
The three human beings were in various attitudes of transfigured astonishment exactly as though they had been lent for this special occasion by Madame Tussaud. There was the lady with the green dress, the girl with the flaming feather and the third figure was a woman, immensely stout and hung with bracelets, pendants, chains and lockets so that when her bosom heaved (it was doing that now quite frantically) the noise that she made resembled those Japanese glass toys that you hang in the window for the wind to make tinkling music with them. The only sounds in the room were this deep breathing and this rattling, twitting, tittering agitation.
Even the Pomeranian was transfixed. Henry felt it his duty to speak and he would have spoken had he not been staring at the girl as though his eyes would never be able to leave her face again. It was plain enough that it was she who had been slapped a moment ago. There was a red mark on her cheek and there were tears in her eyes.
To Henry she was simply the most beautiful creature ever made in heaven and sent down to this sinful earth by a loving and kindly God. He had thought of her as a child when he first saw her, he thought of her as a child again now, a child who had, only last night, put up her hair—under the hat with the flaming feather, that hair of a vivid shining gold was trying to escape into many rebellious directions. The slapping may have had something to do with that. It was obvious at the first glance that she was not English—Scandinavian perhaps with the yellow hair, the bright blue eyes and the clear pink-and-white skin. Her dress of some mole-coloured corduroy, very simple, her little dark hat, set off her vivid colour exquisitely. She shone in that garish vulgar room with the light and purity of some almost ghostly innocence and simplicity. She was looking at Henry and he fancied that in spite of the tears that were still in her eyes a smile hovered at the corners of her mouth.
"Well, sir?" said the lady in green. She was not really angry Henry at once perceived and afterwards he flattered himself because he had from the very first discovered one of the principal features of that lady's "case"—namely, that she would never feel either anger or disapproval—at any member of the masculine gender entering any place whatever, in any manner whatever, where she might happen to be. No, it was not anger she showed, nor even curiosity—rather a determination to turn this incident, bizarre and sudden though it might be, to the very best and most profitable advantage.
"You see," said Henry, "I was in the passage outside and thought I heard some one call out. I did really."