For a moment those tourmalines of her eyes seemed to flicker, as if she would have shown me again the abysses beyond them; but they remained shut as she spoke more slowly still.
"That's not quite the question. Can you—go on—as you are doing? And if you can't, what's the alternative?"
To that I had no answer to make.
Her cigarette had gone out, and her beautiful fingers were holding it listlessly. All at once I found myself noticing the contrast between her and the chattering group of models down the room. The girl with the brown-paper parcel had approached a cupboard and taken out some second-hand property or other of frayed velvet and torn gold: "It's hardly worth re-making: I vote we cut it up," I heard her say. And I wondered whether Louie had sat in the torn and tawdry thing—now that she had been warned against chills. The giggling and the skiddle of teacups went on, but Louie pressed her fingers on her eyeballs for a moment. Perhaps it was this pressure that made them, when she looked up again, seem dull and tired.
"At any rate, that's how it strikes me," she said.
She looked suddenly older—much older—so much older that it gave me a pang. During my walk on the previous day I had told myself over and over again that I must have made of her life also exactly what I had made of my own—a fearful thing without trifles; but I had had to tell myself, if you appreciate what I mean. Now, to see it with my own eyes was another matter. There was that other quantity, the quantity unknown to me but drearily familiar enough to her, I didn't doubt—Kitty.... A word of advice to those who contemplate the putting out of a life on their own responsibility: When a woman, on a rainy night in St. James's Park, or wherever and whenever, lets you look down into her soul, and drops a plummet into your own, and asks you whether you are not a murderer, and you no more dare to lie than you would dare a foulness in the face of majesty, then do anything you like—fly from her, bite out your tongue, kill her also—but for mere pity of her don't answer "Yes." Don't, that is, unless you are sure that she will betray you. If you do, depend on it she'll ask you to a Models' Club or somewhere, and the horror of a life without trifles will come over you, and you'll see her press her fingers on her eyeballs and then look up again, five years older in as many minutes.
"What about Kitty?" I asked abruptly.
She answered quickly—too quickly: "Oh, Kitty's all right; you needn't bother about Kitty; leave her to me. As a matter of fact she's been awfully useful to me."
"How useful?"
"Oh, in quite the most material way," she said, with a short and mirthless laugh. "That's not been pure philanthropy, I assure you. I dare say you know——"