I was so happy. Quite pathetically happy. It had come so easy to me. I had doubted my ability to do the sort of thing; but it had written itself, as money spends itself, and I was going to earn money like that. The whole of my past seemed a mistake—a childishness. I had kept out of this sort of thing because I had thought it below me; I had kept out of it and had starved my body and warped my mind. Perhaps I had even damaged my work by this isolation. To understand life one must live—and I had only brooded. But, by Jove, I would try to live now.
Callan had retired for his accustomed siesta and I was smoking pipe after pipe over a confoundedly bad French novel that I had found in the book-shelves. I must have been dozing. A voice from behind my back announced:
“Miss Etchingham Granger!” and added—“Mr. Callan will be down directly.” I laid down my pipe, wondered whether I ought to have been smoking when Cal expected visitors, and rose to my feet.
“You!” I said, sharply. She answered, “You see.” She was smiling. She had been so much in my thoughts that I was hardly surprised—the thing had even an air of pleasant inevitability about it.
“You must be a cousin of mine,” I said, “the name—”
“Oh, call it sister,” she answered.
I was feeling inclined for farce, if blessed chance would throw it in my way. You see, I was going to live at last, and life for me meant irresponsibility.
“Ah!” I said, ironically, “you are going to be a sister to me, as they say.” She might have come the bogy over me last night in the moonlight, but now ... There was a spice of danger about it, too, just a touch lurking somewhere. Besides, she was good-looking and well set up, and I couldn’t see what could touch me. Even if it did, even if I got into a mess, I had no relatives, not even a friend, to be worried about me. I stood quite alone, and I half relished the idea of getting into a mess—it would be part of life, too. I was going to have a little money, and she excited my curiosity. I was tingling to know what she was really at.
“And one might ask,” I said, “what you are doing in this—in this....” I was at a loss for a word to describe the room—the smugness parading as professional Bohemianism.
“Oh, I am about my own business,” she said, “I told you last night—have you forgotten?”