“No one has ever knitted a muffler for me,” said Ivor pathetically.
And, thus and thus, they came to speak of images, such as are not to be seen in museums. They spoke of images secretly, they spoke cabbalistically about the facelessness of images in hearts, and how an image might suddenly grow a face without a by-your-leave, but what they said about them is of no importance; and they forgot what they had said as soon as they had said it, which is a peculiarity of all cabbalistic conversations.
2
The day was plain as they again neared Hertford Street; and six strokes of a clock hung loose in the still air as they entered it from the Park end. The sky overhead was mother-of-pearl, but an absurdly angry cloud still played darkly among the chimneys of Knightsbridge; and somewhere out of Whitechapel rose the pale gold of the London dawn. The world was awake to the 2nd of May, but Mayfair is not the world, and even the menials of Mayfair lie long abed. As they turned into Hertford Street they startled a robin from a poet’s head on the barren fountain, and he fled away with a cameo note. “There!” sighed Pamela Star.
Hertford Street was still as night as the two tall figures, the dark one-armed man and the woman with the hair that was of the colour of an October leaf, walked silently down it. Three fingers of her hand were lightly within his arm: they did not know how they had got there, but there they stayed, even to the pavement before her house—which stood where Hertford Street, having run a straight course, slopes suddenly downwards towards Shepherd’s Market.
They faced each other—their eyes almost level, she was so tall!—and he took her hand in his.
“I said ‘good-bye, Chinchilla,’ to you years ago,” he said. “But now I’m only going to say good-night.”
And he saw that her eyes were searching for something.
“My name is Ivor,” he said.
“Ivor!” she cried softly. “Ivor and Pamela.” ...