She looked at him with distress. Poor Julian! He had to be theatrical, but his unhappiness was sincere enough. His jesting was so humourless, so affected that it crushed the spirit; and all his talking seemed less a normal exercise than a forced hysterical activity assumed to ease sharp wretchedness. It was not fair to judge and dislike him: he was a sick man.
He sat down again at the piano, and she rose on an impulse and went and stood beside him.
‘Some chaps dance,’ he said. ‘They haven’t stopped dancing since they’ve been back. I play——’ He plunged into a medley of ragtime—‘and play—and play—and play. Syncopation—gets you—right on the nerves—like cocaine—No wonder it’s popular.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Intellectually,’ he said, ‘I adore it. It’s so clever.’
He played on loudly, rapidly, with pyrotechnical brilliance, then stopped. ‘My passions, however, are too debile to be stirred.’
He flung round on the piano stool and dropped his face into his hands, rubbing his eyes wearily.
‘Julian—I wish you weren’t—I wish you could——’
He looked up, startled, saw her expression, looked quickly away again and gave an embarrassed laugh like a boy.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘You needn’t take any notice of me. I’m being a bore. I’m sorry.’ The last words were faintly husky.