Knowing, as she spoke, the futility, the obviousness of the lie, yet somehow unable to help speaking it, Marie answered in abrupt confusion. Yes, she had been gardening; it—it was a favourite hobby nowadays; all her friends....
With that sleek face before her, those fragile fingertips handling hers, she would not for a fortune have confessed: "I spoil my hands because I spend my days between the stove and the sink; because I've cooked and swept and sewed for a man and three children; because I wash and iron." Secretly the manicurist would laugh and ridicule; in her smooth white face and twinkly eardrops was the story of what she would think of such a domestic fool; of the woman who was the slave of man and home; who had lost her looks and hope in the servitude of married poverty.
Presently the finger-nails were done; they did not look a great deal better even now, but they felt charmingly petted and soothed. Again the manicurist ran her eye over the other from head to heel, letting her glance rest at last upon her face.
"A face massage, madame?" she suggested.
Marie hesitated, and the girl added, smiling: "It would be half a crown."
"I have not time to-day, thank you," Marie said, rising. She paid for the manicure and left the warm and scented place; she had nowhere particular to go, no one to talk to, and yet she did not wish to go home so early. It would have been a tame ending to her day and, besides, she had not seen all yet. She wanted to see the lights rise and twinkle along the streets, to watch the evening life come in like a tide, wave upon wave breaking musically upon the city's shore; and to feel that even then, though six o'clock had passed, and seven, and eight, she was yet her own mistress. She was sampling sensations, not altogether new, but at any rate long forgotten. It occurred to her, as she turned out of the Beauty Shop, to go and call upon someone; but upon whom? She knew, as she asked the question of herself, that, while she had lost a score of light-hearted acquaintances upon her wedding day, she had since been too busy to make more. There were upon her limited horizon, in fact, only Julia and Rokeby. Julia, at this moment still afternoon, would be involved in much business, someone else's business which she could not put aside as if it were her own to do as she pleased with; but Rokeby called no man master.
She hardly knew why she thought of going to tell Rokeby her news, but there was a want in her, a want of a wise someone's comments, a kind someone's sympathy. She boarded a City omnibus and was carried to King William Street.
Here Desmond had his prosperous shipbroking office, and made his enviable thousands and sharpened his innately sharp brain, so well concealed below his lacklustre, almost naïve, exterior.
A lift carried her up to the third floor, where she arrived before a door upon the glass panels of which were blazoned his name and profession, and pushing it open, she asked for him uncertainly. A clerk said doubtfully: "Have you come about the typist's situation?" and looked at her in a summary fashion which made her timid.
She hated this timidity which had grown upon her with the married years; a timidity based upon loss of trust in her womanly powers, loss of the natural arrogance of beauty. Holding her head very erect, she replied: