"Don't look, then! Shall I hide it behind my table-napkin? That's sheer cowardice. Fill your glass, and mine, please. Go on; tell me how I strike you frankly! I know; you think I don't approach literature reverently enough and ought to devote twelve months to a book, and let my poor little children go barefoot in the meanwhile? Well, I did give twelve months to a book once; but I had a husband when I wrote Two and a Passion, and he provided the shoes. Now, if I didn't work as I do, I should have to live at Battersea, and buy my clothes at Brixton, and take my holidays at Southend. You wouldn't calmly condemn me to Southend? My income, apart from what I make, barely pays my rent."
"Your rent is somewhat heavy," suggested Kent, "with two flats going at once."
"Wretch! do you lecture me because I couldn't find a tenant for the Victoria Street place? He blames me for my misfortunes!"
She caught the long gloves up, and swirled them round on his cheek. Like the others, they were perfumed; but now their scent was in his face. They looked in each other's eyes an instant, smiling across the corner of the table. Then, as the smile died away, they remained looking in each other's eyes attentively. He drew the gloves from her hold, and played with them. Her hand lay upturned to take them back, and in restoring them his own rested on it. She averted her gaze, but her palm did not slip away so quickly as it might have done.
"You know you may smoke," she said, rising and going over to the fire. "I'll have one, too."
"Isn't it too late?" he asked, joining her.
His voice was not quite steady, and now he didn't look at her as he spoke.
"You can have one cigarette," she said, sinking into an armchair, and crossing her feet on the fender. "How's the paper going? Eclipsing Le Petit Journal?"
"Of course," he said. "Did you ever know anybody's paper that wasn't?"
"You count Paris your home, I suppose? You mean to stop here permanently? I go back in March; the people are returning here then. I loathe London after Paris, but I shall have escaped most of the winter there, that's one thing. Where did you live in town?"