Ivor and Virginia dined in a private sitting-room upstairs. Obsequiously was the door opened for them upon a dark and cumbersome room with high walls of faded red damask: and so long deprived of youth and light that, as the light crept in with Ivor and Virginia, the mirrors stirred sleepily with reflections of ancient candelabras and musty golden patches of Empire luxury on the background of red damask. They dined almost in silence: very companionably, but almost in silence.
The day seemed to have tired Virginia, as well it might; and, excusing her silences, she complained, ever so little, of a pain. It baffled Virginia to describe this pain but as a sick little pain, something between a tummy-ache and an ear-ache, and very disturbing in its frequent comings and goings. And she mocked her pain, saying it was a busy little pain—and very mysterious too, or else French and English doctors had been very unintelligent about it. And to deal with it Virginia always carried about with her some clear, white-looking stuff in a little bottle—“it’s got opium and mint in it,” she said—and she would take a drop or two of this in a thimbleful of water, and it would presently soothe away the sick little pain inside her. And sometimes she would make her friends try a little of the stuff in which there was opium and mint, just to see what it was like, and they generally said it was pretty foul. That is what Ivor sympathetically said to-night, as they sat after dinner in two frightfully uncomfortable arm-chairs in front of the smoky fire. There they sat and talked of nothing in particular, nothing personal. And, quite soon, Virginia said she was tired and wouldn’t mind going to bed; and Ivor said he was also tired, and yawned a splendid yawn to prove it.
They had to walk across the corridor from the sitting-room to their bedrooms, two doors side by side. Virginia let herself into her room; and swiftly she stretched out her hand and took his, and smiled very sweetly at him.
“Good-night, dear,” she said.
2
Once in his room Ivor found he was indeed tired. And when he was tired his mutilated shoulder hurt him: it often hurt him devilishly, but he was almost getting used to it. It tired one a good deal more, he thought, to be driven in a car a long distance than to drive one. He would ask Virginia to let him drive to-morrow, he had driven quite a lot with his one arm, and after all there was young David Harley, who drove splendidly with only one arm and a wooden leg. Then he stopped and stared at something, quite intently; and as he stared at it he was very still, scarcely breathing. Of course, he had seen it before, while he was dressing for dinner, but he had only seen it out of the corner of his eyes; he hadn’t touched it, he hadn’t the faintest idea if it was bolted or not.... Then, suddenly, he felt very weary in mind and body; quickly undressed, and went to bed. It was a wide, low, and very comfortable bed, with no antique nonsense about it. His shoulder hurt like hell.
3
Ivor slept, and had a dream. He dreamed of golden hair falling about his face and body, creepers of golden hair entwining him. And then a strange turn happened, strange even in a dream about golden hair, for he was made to see his mind as a column of marble. And a very tall and shapely column it looked, too! standing on nothing, directed nowhither, just an Attic column looking very beautiful with the rare beauty of an indestructible thing. That column was his mind, in the dream. And he looked at it for a long time, he was made to examine it very carefully. “Look, look!” someone seemed to keep on crying in his ear, rather impatiently, Ivor thought. And then at last he saw what he was intended to see—there it was, oh so high up on the column! There it was, a naked creature, a woman, a slight and naked thing, and so dazzling white! She held on there in a marvellous abandon of fulfilment, white arms and legs deliciously entwining the column, golden hair wanton about her shoulders, and lips destroying the marble column with kisses. Ivor stared at it for a long time, a very long time, and as he stared the column seemed to come nearer and nearer to him, until he could hear what the golden woman was whispering as her lips destroyed the column. But although he could distinctly hear what she was whispering, his mind couldn’t form what he heard into words, simply couldn’t; and he miserably racked his brain about it, thinking that it was very important indeed for him to form her whisperings into words. And when at last he opened his eyes to the dark room he could still hear the whispering, but now he could form what the whispering voice was saying; it was saying: “Oh, Ivor! dear Ivor....” And she wasn’t kissing a silly marble column at all, that golden woman, she was kissing his lips, and her hair was falling about his face, tickling just a little. Oh, she wasn’t real, of course! she was only a legend, a legend of a night in Avignon! And, stretching out his hand, he touched her body lying across the bed, and her body under the very thin nightdress was icy cold to his hand.
“You’ll catch a most awful cold,” he murmured to the amazing lips.