He walked into the library and mixed himself a drink. Women were too near animals to be civilized, but they were pleasantly domesticated. Pink tulips on every table, great branches of lilac bursting from both fire-places... And his senses had brought with him that faint fragrance of violets. Gaymer wondered what O’Rane had done when Sonia ran away and left him with memories and a ravening hunger. The world was full of women, but their love was impermanent; you could not buy or steal a substitute if it was your wife who had left you... Or Ivy, who was as much your own as a wife....
“A drink for you, O’Rane?,” asked Gaymer.
“No, thanks. I can smell things, but my taste is not what it once was... I don’t want to seem inhospitable, Gaymer, but you’re drinking much more than’s good for you. It’s a sound rule only to drink when you’re at the top of your form; otherwise it’s a waste of good liquor and ruination of a good constitution.”
Gaymer drained his tumbler and refilled it. The decanter rattled, as he put it down on the tray, and he transferred it to the table-cloth so that he could help himself again, if he desired, without attracting his host’s over-acute attention.
“I can drop it any time I like,” he boasted.
“Then drop it now,” O’Rane suggested. “Apart from health, you aren’t doing yourself any good. I hear you’re looking out for a job, and it’s only fair to warn you that you’re getting a bad name with men and women. D’you like candid advice?”
“I don’t mind it from you.”
“Well, I should clear out of this country. There’s too little work for you, too much drink and too many women. Your record in the war was too creditable to fritter away in bars and promenades. Take a couple of years to steady down and then come home and get married. You’re not fit to marry till you’ve got your nerve-centres back in place.”
Gaymer refilled his glass and replaced the decanter carefully; the syphon was a noisy complication, so he dispensed with it.
“I haven’t the least idea what I want to do,” he yawned.