To think he would be with Roddy for weeks, sharing work and talk and jokes and meals—seeing him sleep and wake; while she herself ... never again. If she saw him coming towards her, she must turn back; if she passed him in the street she must look away.
‘Please take care of yourself, Judith.’
She nodded, smiling wearily.
He jerked round and went down the steps and she waited for him to turn his head again. But, when he reached the corner, without looking back, he waved his hand in a young quick awkward pretense of jauntiness, and strode on.
She stood and saw the fresh garden filling with light and shade; and thought: ‘Poor Martin’s crying’; and shut the door on him and the sun and the screaming of the birds.
8
The hotels and shops made a circle round the great Place; and to and fro all day went the people to their baths and douches and sprays. Bilious obese old Jews and puffy, pallid Americans thronged and perspired; and ancient invalids came in bathchairs with their glum attendants. There was one, a woman long past age and change, with a skin of dusky orange parchment, black all round the staring eyeholes, tight over the cheeks and drawing back the dark lips in a grin. She was alive: her orange claws twitched on the rug. Perched high upon her skull, above the dead and rotten hair, she wore a large black sailor hat trimmed with a wild profusion of black feathers. Every morning, seated idly in front of the hotel, Judith watched for that most macabre figure of all in the fantastical show.
The sun poured down without cloud or breeze, and the buildings and pavements seemed to vibrate in the air. It was too hot to stay in the valley. She joined parties and motored up through the vineyards into the hills—racing along in search of a draught on her face, eating succulent lunches at wayside inns, coming back in the evening to play tennis and bathe; to change and dine and dance; to hear a concert at the Casino; to sit in the open air and drink coffee and eat ices.
The hours of every day were bubbles lightly gone.
She was Miss Earle, travelling with her elegant and charming mother, staying at the smartest hotel and prominent in the ephemeral summer society of the health-resort. Her odd education sank into disreputable insignificance: best not to refer to it. She was adequately equipped in other ways. She had a string of pearls, and slim straight black frocks for the morning, and delicious white and yellow and green and pink ones for the afternoon; and white jumpers with pleated skirts and little white hats for tennis; and, for the evening, straight exquisitely-cut sleeveless frocks to dance in. She had them all. Mamma had ordered them in Paris with bored munificence and perfect taste, and an unenthusiastic ear for the modiste’s rapturous approval of her daughter.