“And I think,” she said, “that there’s somewhere a son of yours who needs me—frightfully!”
“Comedia!” whispered the young Italian with the broken nose, as the lift swallowed up the silence of monsieur et milady.
CHAPTER XII
1
The pact was made, then: there was to be no talk of “arrangements” until the autumn, it was to be a clear summer of—“unreason,” Virginia teased him. So they had no thought of returning to England that spring or summer, and did not—except for one reckless night in April, to a masque at the Albert Hall. Carnival, lovely carnival! And they were so weirdly and completely disguised—for Virginia was an adept at the art of masque and fancy-dress—that not one of her thousand acquaintances recognised her, or him; and they had much fun to watch the cheerful passages of Lois and many another, including Tarlyon and Hugo Cypress, who had both adopted the same fancy-dress in the form of an Assyrian beard each: with which Tarlyon looked quite magnificent and royal, and Hugo quite too comical. And once, as she passed him, Hugo caught her and insisted on her complaisance for the dance; but as she danced, she didn’t, of course, dare utter a word, lest he should recognise her and “cluck” the news to every one; though even so he might have perceived her had he not been so tipsy—“entirely to amuse the guests, lovely lady,” he earnestly assured her choking silence. And then, in the early morning, swift bathing and changing in Ivor’s flat in Upper Brook Street, and so back to France by the eight o’clock train. “Unreason,” indeed!...
What had they to do with England, those two, and what had England to do with them, during those months? They would outlaw themselves until the autumn....
They were violently happy in each other. They were great lovers, Ivor and Virginia. And sometimes it was a consuming love, and then again it would be very gentle: silent now and bubbling then, gay and grave in changing moods, and sometimes it would be passing sombre—and then again the thing would burst upon them. “Like a flash of very white teeth,” Virginia said. But she said many strange things in nearness, for she was very shameless with him, which was strange in her. (Gerald Trevor used to say that it was the business of a good mistress to be shameless, and the business of a good lover to appreciate it. Men can’t afford to be shameless, they get nasty, he said. Prejudice, of course. Dear Gerald!) One day she wondered about her shamelessness with him, saying that she had never been like that before.
“But never, Ivor! Men have wanted me to say things, of course, but one just wasn’t able to, even if one liked them very much. One just couldn’t. But now! Oh, you lovely beast, Ivor!...”
Now when Virginia said she had “never” done a thing before, there was no question of not believing her (the word “never” is really frightfully difficult to believe), for the amazing thing about Virginia was that she never told a lie. She had never been known to so far, anyway. And Ivor accused her of never telling a lie, saying that it was inhuman, and that he felt rather out of it, having told a-many.
“But that’s where I’m beastly,” she pointed out vividly. “I go silent, you see. I just sit still and say nothing. It’s much worse than lying, and much crueller, to be silent—and I’m known, you know, as a very silent woman. Of course I get a bit chatty with you ...” she suddenly giggled at his expression. That was how things generally ended with those two....