He looked with cool hope at the “remittance woman.” She had rather a flat crumpled face and very soft looking matt skin. Her pince-nez were the only firm thing in her face; they obviously pinched very strongly.
“I must introduce you to my only friend,” she said waving her hands towards an apparently empty corner of the living-room. Then Edward saw that a canary was suspiciously eyeing him from the dresser.
Edward chuckled doubtfully. “Have you really no other friends?” he said, telling himself that the woman was rather morbid.
“None,” replied the Englishwoman placidly. “The people I know in England pay me to make my home on another continent. I am unfortunate in being hateful to everyone I meet.”
“Haven’t you any relations?” asked Edward lamely.
“I am not married and my sisters in England hate me. I once was determined to get married and even got so far as to wait in a white dress at a church in North London. But the man changed his mind and never came. Indeed he did not change his mind, he hated me all along. Everybody does.”
Edward was overwhelmed. The woman seemed to him offensive. Did she suppose she was the only person in the world who had Known Grief? However, he felt a little proud because she was telling him these things. He thought he must have a sympathetic face—“the face of one who had been down into the depths.” He drew the corners of his mouth down to make his face more sympathetic.
“When I say everybody,” added the woman, “of course I am excepting Edward.”
Edward dropped his sympathetic expression just as it was properly adjusted. “Excepting who?”