"I promise to finish it as quickly as I can," he said. "Even if I didn't care to serve you, I should do that, for my own sake. When I get two hundred pounds, I shall be at the end of my troubles."
"Happy man!" said Mrs. Deane-Pitt. "Would that two hundred pounds would see the end of mine! And as you do want to serve me, you'll do it even more quickly than you can?"
"Or try."
"That's very nice of you. I wonder how true it is. One of the answers one has to make, isn't it? Then when you're behind with the work, and your wife wants to be taken out somewhere, you'll nobly remember there's a miserable woman in Victoria Street depending on you and persuade Mrs. Kent to go with a sister, or a cousin, or an aunt? You'll say to yourself 'Excelsior!' and other improving mottoes, meaning 'Loyalty forbids'?"
"I'll say 'Loyalty forbids' when I want to go out by myself; my wife's in the country."
"Tant mieux! if it isn't shocking," she laughed. "I'm afraid a woman on the spot would prove too strong for me. Am I grossly selfish? Poor boy who has got no wife!"
She looked at him as she had looked across the supper-table in the avenue Wagram. He could not think of anything to say, of a nature that commended itself to him; and he exclaimed abruptly:
"Oh, you may rely on me, Mrs. Deane-Pitt; I'll never go anywhere; I'll be a hermit! By the way, you don't know I'm in Soho now. Perhaps I'd better give you the address?"
"Certainly," she said; "I may want to write to you. The Hermit of Soho! Well, when you've been good and done penance thoroughly, hermit, you may come and see me sometimes; I'll allow you that distraction. Come in whenever you like, and you can tell me how the thing is going. Any afternoon you please at this time. And don't come in trembling at me any more; I don't expect you to write me a masterpiece in six weeks, poor boy."
Kent kept his word to her doggedly, and, although he continued to rise early, he was seldom free to join Turquand until about nine o'clock in the evening. When the chapter was done, he would go downstairs, and light another pipe, and Turquand would put away his book or his paper without any indication of curiosity. With a woman such a state of things would have been impossible; but Turquand's manner was so unforced that by degrees Kent came to own that he was tired, or to make some other allusion to his labour quite freely. And not once did the other say to him, "Well, but what is it you're doing?" On the days that he called on Mrs. Deane-Pitt, it was later still before he could loll in the parlour; the temptation to go to her, however, was more than he could resist. He realised very soon that she had an attraction for him which was not in the least like friendship, and which he could never term "friendship" any more. In moments, as he sat writing in his shabby bedroom under the tiles, the thought of her would suddenly creep into him, and beat in his pulses till he was assailed by a furious longing to be in her presence; and though he often denied the longing, he frequently obeyed it. He would throw down his pen, and change his coat, and leave the house impetuously, seeing her, in fancy, all the way to the flat. During a fortnight or so, he sought some reason for the visit. Would she like the heroine to go on the stage when her husband lost his money? Did she think it would be a good idea to kill the husband, and introduce a new character to reinstate the girl in luxury? But presently such excuses were abandoned. For one thing, Mrs. Deane-Pitt was too much occupied with her serial to accord any serious consideration to his work; and for another, she welcomed him as a matter of course. It was agreeable to her to see this man who was in love with her, and whom she liked, looking at her with eyes that betrayed what he would not allow his tongue to acknowledge. "Oh, I'm glad," she would say, "I was hoping it was you. Sit down and make yourself comfortable—no, bring me that cushion first—and talk to me, and be amusing." Sometimes she received him radiantly, sometimes wearily. On one afternoon she declared she was in the best of spirits, and had just been wishing for someone to bear her company; on the next she sighed that she was worried to death, and that he had only arrived in time to save her from extinction. "Bills," she would yawn, when he questioned her, "bills! A dressmaker, a schoolmistress—I forget which. Some wretch threatens something, I know. Don't look so concerned; I shall survive. Cheer me up." Then the servant would enter with the tea-things, and afterwards, in the cool shadows of the drawing-room, through which the perfume of the heliotrope that grew in a huge bowl under the crimson lamp floated deliciously, there would be cigarettes, and a half-hour that he found exquisite in its air of intimate familiarity. Though no verbal admission was ever made, there were seconds in which Kent's voice, as plainly as his face, told her what he felt for her, and seconds in which the tones of the woman said, "I'm quite conscious of the effect I have on you; we both understand, of course." Occasionally he had a glimpse of her children, and once when he was there, Mrs. Deane-Pitt took the boy on her lap, among the folds of her elaborate tea-gown, and fondled him. "Do you think I make a nice mother, Mr. Kent?" she said, flashing a glance. "This monkey doesn't appreciate his privileges." She kissed the child three times, and in the gaze that she lifted over his curly head there was, for an instant, provocation that shook the man.