“Please, dear, don’t let us talk any more about these people,” begged Lacrima softly. “Let me be happy for a little while.”
Mr. Quincunx stroked his beard. “You are a queer little girl,” he said. “But what I should do if the gods took you away from me I have not the least idea. I should not care then whether I worked in an office or in a factory. I should not care what I did.”
The girl jumped up impulsively from her seat and went over to him. Mr. Quincunx took her upon his knees as he might have taken a child and fondled her gravely and gently. The smoke of his cigarette ascended in a thin blue column above their two heads.
At that moment there was a mocking laugh at the window. Lacrima slid out of his arms and they both rose to their feet and turned indignantly.
The laughing face of Gladys Romer peered in upon them, her eyes shining with delighted malevolence. “I saw you,” she cried. “But you needn’t look so cross! I like to see these things. I have been watching you for quite a long time! It has been such fun! I only hoped I could keep quiet for longer still, till one of you began to cry, or something. But you looked so funny that I couldn’t help laughing. And that spoilt it all. Mr. Dangelis is at the gate. Shall I call him up? He came with me across the park. He tried to stop me from pouncing on you, but I wouldn’t listen to him. He said it was a ‘low-down stunt.’ You know the way he talks, Lacrima!”
The two friends stood staring at the intruder in petrified horror. Then without a word they quickly issued from the cottage and crossed the garden. Neither of them spoke to Gladys; and Mr. Quincunx immediately returned to his house as soon as he saw the American advance to greet Lacrima with his usual friendly nonchalance.
The three went off down the lane together; and the poor philosopher, staring disconsolately at the empty tea-cups of his profaned sanctuary, cursed himself, his friend, his fate, and the Powers that had appointed that fate from the beginning of the world.