Thanks to the draught the cigar smoke had lost its heaviness, and was floating as a sort of spiritual essence through the textures.
For some minutes after Gwen came in she could hardly discern it at all, when she did she wished she could transport it to her part of the house, it struck her as being a purer scent than one gets in women’s rooms.
“How hospitable those chairs look!” she said, feeling one. “Does he lose all his right hand gloves, I wonder! Do all men? As a matter of fact I know amazingly little of men or of their ways! This is a clean, self-respecting room, I like it, I wonder I never took any notice of it before! Ah, another screen!”
She moved it aside and found an alcove where an easel stood, and on this a picture hidden by a drapery of primrose and chestnut silk.
“The way that drapery falls is quite different from anything else,” said Gwen stepping back a pace or two, “why won’t my tea-gowns go like that!”
Something suggested to her just then to pry no further, but she swept the suggestion aside with the draperies, and saw before her her own painted image. For one minute she felt inclined to rip the canvas from end to end, and to kill once and for all the vague look of motherhood in the woman’s eyes.
“This wretch!” she muttered at last, “so she’s in the house! As if I hadn’t enough to handicap me without her.”
She turned away with a look of loathing and jealous hatred, and sat down.
After a little she got up slowly and turned to leave the room, then almost in spite of herself she went back to the picture and began again her angry eager inspection of it.
As she stood with her head thrown back and her hands clenched involuntarily, her husband came in. He did not see her for a minute; when he did, he stopped, and watched her.