Mrs. Norman assented. It was extraordinary, if you came to think of it. Mrs. Wilkinson had no understanding of the art. What did it mean to her? Where did it take her? You could see she was transported, presumably to some place of chartered stupidity, of condoned oblivion, where nobody could challenge her right to enter and remain.
"So soothing," said Wilkinson, "to the nerves."
Mrs. Norman smiled at him. She felt that, under cover of the music, his spirit was seeking communion with hers.
He thanked her at parting; the slight hush and mystery of his manner intimated that she had found a way.
"I hope," she said, "you'll come often—often."
"May we? May we?" He seemed to leap at it—as if they hadn't come often enough before!
Certainly she had found the way—the way to deliver him, the way to pacify his wife, to remove her gently to her place and keep her there.
The dreadful lady thus creditably disposed of, Wilkinson was no longer backward in the courting of his opportunity. He proved punctual to the first minute of the golden hour.
Hampstead was immensely interested in his blossoming forth. It found a touching simplicity in the way he lent himself to the sympathetic eye. All the world was at liberty to observe his intimacy with Mrs. Norman.
It endured for nine weeks. Then suddenly, to Mrs. Norman's bewilderment, it ceased. The Wilkinsons left off coming to her Friday evenings. They refused her invitations. Their behavior was so abrupt and so mysterious that Mrs. Norman felt that something must have happened to account for it. Somebody, she had no doubt, had been talking. She was much annoyed with Wilkinson in consequence, and, when she met him accidentally in the High Street, her manner conveyed to him her just resentment.