“Settled,” exclaimed Mr. Samuel, and after that, of course, escape followed. The idea of dinner together hovered between the two as they emerged into the principal street, but as both were penniless, the idea, which originated chiefly in instinct, died.
The gardener went to call on the suffragette. He was conscientious in his own way, and fully realised that the woman had a right to know that she was now a wife, and, if not a stewardess, an intending passenger on a boat bound immediately for the uttermost ends of the earth.
He found the suffragette, looking sad, playing a forlorn game of solitaire in forlorn surroundings in the little hotel sitting-room. With her hat off she looked not so ugly, but more insignificant. Her hair seemed as if it would never decide whether to be fair or dark until greyness overtook it and settled the question. It had been tidied under protest, and already strands of it were creeping over her ears, like deserters leaving a fortress by stealth.
The room was papered and ceiled and upholstered in drab, there were also drab photographs of unlovable bygones on the walls, and some drab artificial flowers in a drab pot on the table.
There are some colour schemes that kill romance. Directly the gardener felt the loveless air of the place, he plunged headlong into the cold interview. Like a bather who, on feeling the chill of the sea, hastens desperately to throw it around him from head to foot.
“I have been telling lies,” said the gardener.
“I have been crying,” said the suffragette.
They each thought that it was thoughtless of the other to be so egotistical at this juncture. There is nothing that kills an effect so infallibly as a collision in conversation.
“I have been telling lies,” said the gardener, “about you.”
“I have been crying—about you.”