“Of course I needn’t have done so,” he said; and she felt his voice inside her: she felt his voice sinking in her like molten bronze into a mould. “If I had met you somewhere in Holland, I would only have taken off my hat and not spoken to you. But we are in a foreign country....”
“What difference does that make?”
“I felt I should like to speak to you.... I wanted to have a talk with you. Can’t we do that as strangers?”
“As strangers?” she echoed.
“Oh, well, we’re not strangers: we even know each other uncommonly intimately, eh?... Come and sit down and tell me about yourself. Did you like Rome?”
“Yes,” she said.
He had led her as though with his will to a couch behind a half-damask, half-glass, Louis-XV. screen; and she dropped down upon it in a rosy twilight of candles, with bunches of pink roses around her in all sorts of Venetian glasses. He sat on an ottoman, bending towards her slightly, with his arms on his knees and his hands folded together:
“They’ve been gossiping about you finely at the Hague. First about your pamphlet ... and then about your painter.”
Her eyes pierced him like needles. He laughed:
“You can look just as angry as ever.... Tell me, do you ever hear from the old people? They’re in a bad way.”