It was the drop of gall in the honey of her happiness. She would cut his bread and sausage, learn to darn his socks, sew on his buttons, wash out his handkerchiefs for him; that her hands as well as her heart should serve and adore him was all her joy; but I saw the droop of her head and the tremor of that upturned lip that betrayed the pearls. Julia Oliphant might hardly dare, but this one—ah, she was so recently a child! I think she would even have left Derry's side for ten minutes might they but have been spent with her mother's arms about her and the smell of her father's pipe not far away. I don't know whether a tear had ever dropped on to that ironing-board of Madame's downstairs. I saw one drop now.
"Yes, Jennie's people," I said again. "I suppose you want to know about them?"
I saw no harm in reminding him, at any rate, that however great things might be happening to him, minor but still important ones were happening simultaneously elsewhere. Even when you start a new life under the shadow of an old one you cannot entirely escape the world and its ordinary responsibilities.
"Of course we do," he said, surprised. "I'm going to them the moment things are shipshape again."
"You may see them even sooner than that. I need hardly tell you I shall have to wire to them immediately."
He sighed a little. "Well, I suppose the music's got to be faced," he said quietly.
"You're not going to try to give me the slip, are you?"
Again the surprised look. "Of course not. What have I just been telling you? That's the whole idea. If all goes as it is going a couple of days might put the stopper on this memory business once for all. Then we shall go to them at once. I want to get it over."
I looked around the room again. Practically upon the window-sill of it somebody across the street was preparing for bed. In order to get to that upper chamber of theirs at all one had to pass through the public room downstairs. Everything about the place sighed with age and indefinable odour; one knew not what mould, what sweating life, what "silver fishes," those tired old walls did not harbour. I don't think I am too fastidious, but that was no place for that jonquil, Jennie Aird.
"Look here, Derry," I said suddenly, "if it's a fair question, how much money have you got?"