“Oh, I don’t mind.”
She had not pressed her offer. He had commanded his pleasure. So it must be her pleasure. She was that sort of woman.
“What do you do in the evenings?” he asked her.
“Oh, not much. I’m always to bed early. It’s too hot for dancing, ain’t it?” She hurried through her answer.
David suddenly knew that when his sickened will and stinging senses came to the house at night, she was there also! While he lay awake in his bed, a wall was between his nakedness and hers. It was both painful and sweet to think of this.
The black heat rolled with enforcement through the City. Life was wet fire. A murmur of anguish was the breath of the night. He lay wide-eyed, dreaming. The air was a prison. His senses yearned toward the quiet of death as release from this breath of the world—from these fumes of a dead sun. He was under surprise when it knocked at the door.
“Mr. David, I’ve brought you a cool drink. May I come in?”
He did not move. He did not reach for his sheet. Anne came through the blackness and gave him a glass. He gulped wet coolth.
“Thank you—Anne.”
She took the glass. She bent down, her hair was a wonder over his eyes. A wonder, since her hair was hot and still it was good. He felt her moist lips on his chest.... There was the constant spirit of the house, the forbidding intrusion of knowing that he was a guest and she a servant, that this was evil.... Anne was gone.