Nothing easier than a green hat, it appears, can well be bought. Like a flash of summer lightning, that is how a green hat is bought. Says the lady to the shop: “Greeting, sir. I will have a green hat pour le sport, similar in every way to the green hats I have bought here every year since the death of Dr. Crippen.”
“Very good, madam. That will be so much, madam. On your account, madam?”
“Oh, no! My friend will pay. Farewell.”
We spoke very little over the luncheon we took together. It was a stifling day, and what, anyhow, was there to say? Very far from my business was it to speak of broken promises unless spoken to, and very far from her thoughts did any question of broken promises seem. Oh, but that was a fell lady who luncheoned with me on that sweltering day!
We sat picking at green olives and salads and bits of toast, we drank those long iced drinks full of vegetable matter which, apparently, one must drink so that one may feel the heat more poignantly than before, we had nothing in particular to say. Early that morning she had rung me up, a calm, happy voice, demanding from me not the smallest expression of surprise at her presence in London; although, of course, one did make a show of being surprised, for she couldn’t possibly know that I had seen her in that cab, and, I thought, she never would know. The Marches would be let off that, anyhow.
But Iris, over that luncheon, did not appear to remark that I had nothing in particular to say. And, what with the heat and with that, I suppose I grew more and more annoyed, for there isn’t, I suppose, anything in the world more irritating than to be angry with a woman and she not notice it at all. Of course many women will appear not to notice it, but you can see that that is put on; but this Iris just, I’ll swear it, did not notice anything.
Nor, I thought, did she have a very healthy appetite for one not long since recovered from a serious illness, the way she picked at bits of things here and there; but she excused herself to Charles, who came up to protest against the dishonour she did his food, on the ground that she never did eat with her meals.
And then there was a moment when I asked, from a large silence which seemed to her maddeningly natural, I just asked paternally, since it is always easier to be paternal than to be fraternal: “Happy, Iris?”
She was buttering a piece of toast Melba about half an inch square. My question stayed her knife. She stared intently towards the doors of the restaurant for a long second, and then she said, frankly, gravely, calmly, not at all intensely but with unutterable conviction: “Unbearably.” Then she went on buttering her piece of toast Melba, and I could do what I liked about it.
Now I must say this for the Iris who sat with her profile to me that day, that she was a more lovely Iris even than the one I had known. But as to how she was more lovely, that I do not know; nor, if I knew, could I describe it but by using the word “ethereal,” to be immediately followed by the word “unearthly,” for it is a convention not to be broken lightly that a woman who has not long since recovered from a long illness must look “ethereal” and “unearthly.” But she didn’t, I think, look either of those two things. She seemed, I mean to say, more lovely than ever just because she was more earthy. She looked, I fancy I mean, in love—her skin, that is to say, looked as though she who wore it was in love. Yes, her skin did. I fancy it must have been that. A beautiful woman in love and loved seems, in however unaware a moment, to glow with an earthy beauty. When writers say that “Gloria was looking very spiritual that morning” what they really mean—of course, this is all theory—is that Gloria was looking more earthy that morning, that in her eyes there was the afterglow of love’s delight. A beautiful woman neglected or unloved appeals, of course, more to the chivalrous sense in men, for men will stand more of a chance of a sad woman being interested in them; but the very skin of a woman who is coiled in love seems to have a jewel-like quality, and her mind is like a temptation one wants to touch.