In spite of her anger and disappointment, she was loth to let him go. Together they walked through the sombre, old-fashioned hall, of which the walls were hung with engravings of men who had been her father's early contemporaries and friends, and to which she had ever been unwilling to make the slightest alteration. Every lozenge of the black and white marble floor recalled her singularly happy, eager childhood, and Mrs. Robinson would have missed the ugliest of the frock-coated philanthropists and statesmen who looked at her so gravely from their tarnished frames.
She went with him through into the small glazed vestibule which gave access to the square. Herself she opened the mahogany door, and looked out, shivering, into the foggy darkness which lay beyond.
Then came a murmured word or two—a pause—and Winfrith was gone, shutting the door as he went, leaving her alone.
As Mrs. Robinson was again crossing the hall she suddenly stayed her steps, pushed her hair off her forehead with a gesture familiar to her when perplexed, and pressed her cold hands against her face, now red with one of her rare, painful blushes.
She saw, as in a vision, a strange little scene. In her ears echoed fragments of a conversation, so amazing, so unlikely to have taken place, that she wondered whether the words could have been really uttered.
A man, whose tall, thick-set, and rather ungainly figure she knew familiarly well, seemed to be standing close to a tall, slight woman, with whose appearance Penelope felt herself to be at once less and more intimate. She doubted her knowledge of the voice which uttered the curious, ill-sounding words: 'You may kiss me if you like, David.' Not doubtful, alas! her recognition of the quick, hoarse accents in which had come the man's answer: 'No, thank you. I would rather not!'
Could such a scene have ever taken place? Could such an invitation have been made—and refused?
Mrs. Robinson walked on slowly. She went again into the library; once more she knelt down before the fire, and held out her chill hands to the blaze.
That any woman should have said, even to her oldest—ay, even to her dearest friend,'You may kiss me if you like,' was certainly unconventional, perhaps even a little absurd. But amazing, and almost incredible in such a case, would surely be the answer she still heard, so clearly uttered: 'No, thank you. I would rather not!' Then came the reflection, at once mortifying and consoling, that many would give—what?—well, anything even to unreason, to have had this same permission extended to themselves.
She tried to place herself outside—wholly outside—the abominable little scene.