“How?” she asked, archly.
“Of course, it makes no difference to you. You can get on just as well without us.”
“You mustn’t say that; it’s not true. Your affection means a great deal to me, but it takes so much to induce me to go out. When I am once in my chair, I sit thinking, or not thinking; and then I find it difficult to stir.”
“What a horribly lazy mode of life!”
“Well, there it is!... You like me so much: can’t you forgive me my laziness? Especially when I have promised you to come round to-morrow.”
He was captivated:
“Very well,” he said, laughing. “Of course you are free to live as you choose. We like you just the same, in spite of your neglect of us.”
She laughed, reproached him with using ugly words and rose slowly to pour him out a cup of tea. He felt a caressing softness creep over him, as if he would have liked to stay there a long time, talking and sipping tea in that violet-scented atmosphere of subdued refinement: he, the man of action, the politician, member of the Second Chamber, every hour of whose day was filled up with committees here and committees there.
“You were saying that you read and wrote a good deal: what do you write?” he asked.
“Letters.”