She smiled a little.
“You must be a very dangerous man,” she said thoughtfully, “to be in such a hurry not to put your restraint to the test....” It was, after all, very surprising of her to say that, just that.
“You can come in for a moment,” she said. “I would like you to come in for a moment.”
And Ivor, making a sign to the taxi-driver, followed the chinchilla coat into No. 78 Hertford Street.
CHAPTER II
1
Once in the hall of the house she did not look round at him: her steps rang sharply on the stone flags as she passed to a door at the far end of the wide and sombre hall of stone—for in it only one lamp was alight. He threw his hat on a chair and, in following her, had time to be surprised at the spaciousness about him. For, from the outside, the house had looked one of those tall and narrow houses common in Mayfair, where ground-rent is high: there had been no hint of this wide and spacious hall in which the lightest steps resounded portentously. It was like the hall of a house in, say, Carlton House Terrace, it was a hall to hold two butlers—now that footmen have become vulgar—the one to take your hat and the other your name; and at its extremity, near the door through which the chinchilla had passed, there swept upwards with a wide sweep a noble marble stairway, the kind of stairway from the top of which men may fairly envisage the ascending grace of the women who might have loved them or the shortcomings of the woman they have married; for very grievous for a mediocre figure is the ascending of such a gracious stairway as this.
The house was very still, but it is not unusual for a house to be very still towards half-past one. And as Ivor followed the tall lady into the room at the foot of the noble stairway, he wondered why she was doing this odd thing; but (since men cannot help thinking of such things) he did not seriously consider the idea that her invitation would finally include her bed, for any fool can tell a romantic lady from a calm lady, and she was deliciously calm. Probably she was bored, Ivor thought, and would amuse herself a while; and so, though he did not feel very amusing to-night, he would try to be as pleasant as possible.... And he wouldn’t mind a drink, anyway; but he didn’t get a drink.
2
Her voice met him as he went into the room: it was a large and wide room, and it was dim, for she had switched on but a few lights, faint electric-lights hidden in subtle vases here and there about the expanse of the room.