"Not absurd on me? Nor the way I've done my hair for it? I'm not mutton-dressed-as-lamb? And you haven't seen my shoes——"
Round the leg of her chair she pushed a suede sheath slender as one of the willow-leaves on my pond.
"I do hold my own? Among all these smooth hairs and pretty complexions? I haven't got a touch of powder on; do you think I should? Don't natter; honestly; should I be all right if I met Derry?"
I looked at her without smiling. "Which Derry?" I asked.
"Oh, any Derry! Derry at his maddest, his wildest! Tell me, George: if I'd had just one grain of sense before instead of being a sloppy art-student he only remembered once in six months, all flat heels and hair in her eyes, thinking that by cutting sandwiches ... don't you think, George? Mightn't it have made a wee bit of difference? And won't it still when——"
"When what?"
"Oh—any moment! Who knows?"
I tried to break the current of her infatuated fancies. "Julia, don't you think——" But her eyes laughed me down.
"Think, George!... But this is thinking! You've no idea of the amount of brainwork there is in it! Oh, I'm not talking about rubbishy books and pictures now! Why, this is all the thinking I've ever done!"
"I was going to ask you whether you thought that things with him were—going quicker than they ought to, let us say."