It is partly remorse at having snubbed her, and partly perversity, which dictates this sentence on Jim's part. The perversity is, perhaps, the predominating element in his motive—a perversity which, having chilled her away from the subject when she was eagerly seeking an opening to it, now forces her to return to it. She starts a little.
"Yes—yes," she answers; "but 'brought things back' is not quite the right phrase; they"—her voice growing low and tremulous—"had not very far to come."
The quiver in her voice annoys him almost as much as Byng's tears used to do.
"If you would like to ask me any questions," he says stiffly, "I am ready to answer them."
"Are you?" she cries hungrily; "oh, that is kind of you! but, then, you always were kind; but not here"—looking apprehensively round—"I could not trust myself to talk about—about him here; I—I should break down, and nothing"—with a smile that, though watery, is still humorous—"would induce me to make a fool of myself before the widow Wadman." Then, seeing him look at a loss: "Come indoors!" she says impulsively, standing up, and half stretching out her hand as if to draw him after her. "Come into our salon—no, you need not be afraid; we shall have it all to ourselves; father and mother have gone out for their usual constitutional on the Boulevard Mustapha."
He follows her silently, and neither speaks till they find themselves tête-à-tête in the private apartment of the Le Marchants.
It is on the rez-de-chaussée, a suite of three little whitewashed rooms, transmogrified from their original hotel nakedness by flowers and brocade bits. Three large green jars on the chimney-piece, full of generous rose-branches, and boughs of salvia and iris, and stalwart yellow jessamine, make the air sweetly and lightly perfumed. On the table is a litter of Tauchnitz novels, disastrously old English papers, the little scurrilous Algerian sheet, and, lastly, Elizabeth's workbasket—the big workbasket which Jim had last seen standing on the floor in the entresol, at the Piazza d'Azeglio, with its contents strewn all over his friend's prostrate body. At the sight a bitter smile breaks over his face.
"An old acquaintance!" he says, making a mock salutation to it; "it is in better order than when last I had the pleasure of seeing it."
"Do you mean in Florence?" she asks, very slowly.
"Yes"—still with that acrid smile—"after you were gone, I had the honour of helping to pack it to send after you. I am afraid I was rather clumsy over it; but, at any rate, I managed better than he. By-the-bye, did you find any rust on your scissors and thimble when next you had occasion to use them? Poor boy! he cried enough over them to take all the polish off!"