“I knew you would come.”
She ate and drank with him in silence, nibbling and sipping slowly, staving off the abominable moment it would end in.
At last they got up and faced each other. His long bulk stood before her, above her; she could almost feel the vibration of its power.
“Come,” he said. “Come.”
And she went before him, slowly, slipping out through the maze of the tables, hearing behind her Oscar’s measured, deliberate, thoughtful tread. The steep, red-carpeted staircase rose up before her.
She swerved from it, but he turned her back.
“You know the way,” he said.
At the top of the flight she found the white door of the room she knew. She knew the long windows guarded by drawn muslin blinds; the gilt looking-glass over the chimney-piece that reflected Oscar’s head and shoulders grotesquely between two white porcelain babies with bulbous limbs and garlanded loins, she knew the sprawling stain on the drab carpet by the table, the shabby, infamous couch behind the screen.
They moved about the room, turning and turning in it like beasts in a cage, uneasy, inimical, avoiding each other.
At last they stood still, he at the window, she at the door, the length of the room between.