He flung himself upon the ground, and buried his face in the grass.
PART III
CHAPTER XIX
It was the last day of March in the following year. A day when spring drew its breath even in London streets. The evening was drawing in, but the daylight still crept colourless into a pretty room high up in some mansions overlooking the river. Jocelyn Ley sat in front of the fireplace, her elbows resting upon her knees and her chin sunk in her hands. Between her arms a grey kitten lay on its back, blinking its dubious eyes, and clawing the air vaguely with one paw. The spitting flames of a wood fire leaped joyfully in a deepening blaze, and there was a scent in the room, sweet and pungent, of burnt pastilles.
At a little table, where she could catch a full light from the bay window, Mrs. Travis bent over the skeleton of a garment.
“If I take it in in the neck, I must let it out under the arms, and that means taking the sleeves out,” she was saying plaintively.
Jocelyn, from her chair, murmured, “Poor dear!” She always treated her aunt with complacent tenderness, as if she were some kind of elderly child. At the same time, if there were anything to be decided upon, she invariably deferred to her opinion, not from respect, but from an inherent dislike of making herself unpleasant—which her aunt by no means shared. Jocelyn was always plastically under the domination of the nearest personality.
“That comes of not being in Paris,” she went on. “You know you can’t get a jacket in London for that price, which doesn’t want altering. I’ll do it for you presently when the puss is asleep.”
Mrs. Travis, turning the garment this way and that, and screwing up her eyes, broke into fragmentary praise of Parisian dressmakers. They were so smart—so cheap, considering—so chic, pronouncing it so as to leave upon the mind an impression of yellow fluff and broken egg-shell. Jocelyn stroked the kitten’s furry chest softly.
“Why aren’t we in Paris?” she sighed. “I can’t think what made you take this flat for so long! Chelsea’s nice for London, but I’m so sick of London!”