"Personally, I hate sensible people. I am suspicious of fanatics and I believe in mercy."
"I admire perfection.... We could go on like this all day. It is just two o'clock, and when people are late for meals uncle Solon gets sullen."
"Before leaving you," said Lewis, "one last question: there is nothing subtle between us, is there?"
Irene shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh! dear, no."
"That's just what I thought," answered Lewis.
* * * * *
She left him without having lost any of her assurance or self-possession. He had an impression of a brown clean-cut face, narrow hips, stockings drawn tight over transparent ankles, a jumper which her bosom hardly stretched, and a scarf knotted round her neck and floating in the wind behind her.
But the deed giving up possession of the mines lay in the safe in the city, duly signed, sealed and delivered.
Lewis watched her through Lancaster Gate. She went into a large house, cream coloured like the others, with a built-out bay window through which he could see little mahogany tables covered with silver boxes and signed photographs. Lewis was not hungry. He wandered towards the Dutch garden which winter had hardly touched and which, thanks to the box hedges, kept its solemn lines, in keeping with the red and black brick architecture of the Palace which shelters the aged servants of the Crown. In the midst of the paved rectangle in this flowered cloister with its wistaria pergola, freed from the source of his torment, Lewis sat alone with a blackbird.