“She has just gone out. She will be sorry to have missed you.”
He spoke like this because he knew that she liked it: the ceremonial opening each time, to preserve above all things the freshness of their liaison.
They now sat down in the little, shut-in middle gallery, side by side on a settee.
The settee was covered with a cretonne displaying many-coloured flowers; on the white walls were a few cheap fans and kakemonos; and on either side of a little looking-glass stood a console-table with an imitation bronze statue, two nondescript knights, each with one leg advanced and a spear in his hand. Through the glass door the musty little back-verandah showed, with its damp, yellow-green pillars, its flower-pots, also yellow-green, with a few withered rose-trees; and behind this was the damp, neglected little garden, with a couple of lean coco-palms, hanging their leaves like broken feathers.
He now took her in his arms and drew her to him, but she pushed him away gently:
“Doddie is becoming unbearable,” she said. “Something must be done.”
“How so?”
“She must leave the house. She is so irritable that there’s no living with her.”
“You tease her, you know.”
She shrugged her shoulders; she had been put out by a recent scene with her step-daughter: