“Oh, does she? Do go home, my child. How are you going home?”
“Where are your slippers?” She dived down.
“You’ve kicked them under the bed,” he moaned; “they were there.”
“I never touched them; here they are!” She slipped her feet into them; huge, red morocco slippers they were. Pillar would have remembered where they had been bought, the day on which they had been bought, and what kind of a woman she was who had passed at the moment of buying. They must have been the only size left in the bazaar. Diana sat on the edge of the bed again and put out her feet, the slippers swinging like pendulums from the tips of her toes. “Mummy must retract her words—she spoke in her haste—Marcus, my Once Was, I’ve been dancing—did you ever dance?”
“Dear child, do go, who is taking you home?”
“Six people. Pillar is taking care of them downstairs—Well, if you insist, I suppose I must. I shall love to stay with you. You don’t mind my coming like this—do you? Look at me! D’you like me?”
She was exactly—in theory—what Marcus would have liked another man’s niece to be, slight, graceful, with just that amount of assurance he found right in woman; but one does not always want one’s theories to live with one.
When he awoke a few hours later, he was firmly convinced he had dreamed and had dreamed pleasantly enough, and he closed his eyes to dream again; but the dream had vanished. Pillar remained. He brought him his tea, pulled up the blinds, put his things in order, stooped and picked up from the floor something that sparkled and laid it down on the dressing-table.
When he had gone Marcus jumped out of bed, went to the dressing-table and saw lying upon it a small stone of glittering paste. He had not dreamed then. He was glad—in a way. Diana would be a disturbing element in a quiet life—distracting, perhaps, rather than disturbing.