Again she hoped she was not doing an unwise thing in having Kitty to come and live with her. But the flat was at last taken. It was a top one in the New King's Road. A Board School now blocks out the pretty view that Louie presently had at night, of the distant cupful of light that was Earls Court, with the illuminated advertisement of the Big Wheel appearing and disappearing as the structure slowly turned. Well, Kitty's fifteen shillings would pay the rent, and the experiment would be a good thing for Kitty also. Louie had furniture enough—in fact, it would be a very good thing—all round.
"Come along—time," Billy grunted. "And I say, can you stop a bit later to-night? I've got to go out, but if I don't finish this thing to-day I never shall——"
Louie mounted the throne again, and again the silence was broken only by Billy's stepping back from his canvas and forward again.
The light began to fail, and Billy began to work the more furiously. "Give me just another ten minutes," he muttered, a brush between his teeth; "this'll make some of 'em sit up, I think; it's painting, this is!... But I don't know, perhaps I'd better let it go as it is; it's a job, anyway. All right, Louie, thanks.... Right-o, Jeffries; I didn't think it was so late."
The last words were spoken to the man who had knocked at the door and, without waiting for a reply, walked in.
Louie had heard the steps on the stairs; perhaps—she could not tell—she had already thought it unusual that the steps had not stopped at the water-tap on the landing below that was the supply for the two upper floors. Billy used that tap when he washed his brushes; he was looking for his palette-knife now.
But Louie neither saw Billy nor heard his grumblings because the knife was not to hand. She was looking past Billy, past the easel with the study upon it, at the man who had entered. For one moment she was wondering that she had not always known, not only that he would come some day, but that he would come that day; the next moment she had told herself that she had always known that.
Of her whole body, from the foot near the crochet to the last brown hair of her head, her lips were the only portion that did not receive him with a lightsome, quiet, fair, trusting smile.
Absurd ever to have supposed that they would never meet! Wise to have known so perfectly what would happen when they did!
What had happened? Oh, every particle of her seemed to sing to every other particle what had happened! Those pittings of her profession? Oh, there they went, washed out, all out, in the baptism of a look! Her fancies—those idle promises to pay drawn on a non-existent bank? Oh, they had gone, and here was payment itself, the solid, actual cash! She was suddenly rich. As she stood there, rich in seeing him, rich in being seen by him, every one of those worthless bills was honoured in full. She could have laughed at her past poverty. She could have cried aloud: "Jim, I'm here—look at me—no, not my eyes only——"