2
“My movements,” said Virginia, in her slightly hoarse, low voice, “are cloaked in mystery. I’ve come to see you, Ivor.”
He was delighted to see her....
Virginia swiftly surveyed the comfort of the low-ceilinged room, and with a sigh of relief threw herself into one of the two deep arm-chairs on each side of the fire.
“A long and cold and lonely walk it was,” she complained. He gave her a cigarette.
Her hat, that so black and anarchichal hat, made a loose black stain on the polished table; and her golden-tawny hair shone bright between the firelight and the lamp. Lithe and long and slack this Virginia looked, deliciously at rest in the deep expanse of her chair. And her bright, yellow silk jumper coloured the room with a sudden luxury and meaning. Fantasy has come into the room, thought Ivor.
“I’m finding,” he told her, “that this room is not the complete room I had thought. I have liked the decoration of this room until this moment——”
“Thank you!” said Virginia.
“—— but now I see that the decoration it really needs, Virginia, is that yellow silk jumper—how nice it would be if you left it behind with me, so that I could hang it up on the wall! and every time I saw it I would think: ‘Virginia came to see me once!’”
Her face was laid sideways against her palm, and her eyes smiled faintly into the fire; and she held up a very little foot to the fire.