"And you're dying for me to marry him. That's why you're always insulting him."
She moved away from Mrs. Smithers's side and stood at the open window looking out on to the garden, her hand to her cheek in her favourite attitude of meditation. "Yes, I am in love with him in a superficial sort of way. It's his absurdity, his unreality, his utterly impossible conception of life. And his love of me. Just as absurd as the rest of him. A fantasia. Two years' worship of a woman he saw dancing for ten minutes before a vulgar, gaping, unseeing mob! Think of it. It's sheer worship, Smithy. He sees something miraculous—divine in me. That's the wonderful part of him. He's right. He's gone right through me to what is divine—my art. He saw me dance—he was just a country-bumpkin who didn't know Beethoven from Bizet—and he didn't worry about my beauty or the shape of my limbs, or wonder whether my pearls were real or who gave them to me. He saw God in me. I knew that when I found my photograph on his table. In a kind of flash. It wasn't a silly, stage-door infatuation. It was real—a perfect understanding." She threw out her arms with a gesture of freedom, of spiritual expansion. "Oh, it tasted good, that understanding. I couldn't have done less than love him." She seemed to sink into a deep, brooding contentment, and Mrs. Smithers did not move or speak. "But I shan't marry him. I am not young any longer. I have built my house and have lived in it too long. I need space and splendour, magnificence. I should stifle in his hovel. I am no sensualist. I belong to the best of the old Greeks. No vulgar display of wealth, no ugliness of poverty—but absolute Beauty—that's my religion—the most austere religion of the world. He understands, but he cannot follow. He doesn't know it, but he has chosen the road of the Galilean—not the Galilean of the Cross, but the simple man who loved the sparrows and the lilies—and I follow Diana and Apollo——" She broke off with a sigh and turned away. "So that's the end of that. We shall pack our trunks, and one day it will be just an episode. But today—don't let any one worry me today, Smithy. There's some one coming up the drive now. Tell them I'm ill—anything—only don't let them worry me——"
She touched the old cheek with her lips, and then soundlessly, like a flash of pale light, had vanished.
Mrs. Smithers unfolded her mittens and put them on. Apparently unmoved, she was about to resume her offensive against her enemy, when Mary Compton made her appearance on the balcony. Whereupon Mrs. Smithers postponed her attack in order to settle first with the intruder. Her manner, however, was almost gracious. She liked Mrs. Compton. She liked her especially this afternoon because she was wearing one of Sigrid's frocks—by no means an old one—which Mrs. Smithers had altered with her own hands. This detail formed an unbreakable link of affection and fraternity.
Mrs. Compton did not wait for an invitation. She dropped into the nearest chair, discarded her garden hat, and flung her parasol on the floor, proceeding thereafter to ruffle her grey-threaded curly hair with an exasperated hand.
"Oh, the heat! Smithy, for pity's sake, don't tell me I've faced it for nothing. Sigrid's in?"
"She's in, Mrs. Compton, but she's not at home."
"Not even for me?"
"Not for a living soul."
"She's—she's not ill?"