On the threshold Clementina turned and crossed the room again.
“Ephraim,” she said, “I think if you and I had been better friends all these years, there wouldn’t have been so much of this adjusting necessary. It has been my fault. I’m sorry. But now that we have a child to bring up, I’ll look after you. You poor man,” she added, touching his arm very kindly and feeling ridiculously sentimental. “You must be the loneliest thing that ever happened.” She caught up his suit of pyjamas and threw them by his side on the sofa. “Now for God’s sake stick on these things and go to bed.”
Downstairs, in the vestibule, she found Poynter with the little girl on his knees. The Chinese nurse sat like a good-tempered idol a few feet away.
“This is your new auntie,” said Poynter, as Clementina approached.
The child slipped from his knees and looked up at her with timorous earnestness. She was fair, with the transparent pallor of most children born and bred in the East, a creature of delicate fragility and grace. Clementina saw that she had her father’s frank hazel eyes. The child held out her hand.
“Good morning, auntie,” she said in a curiously sweet contralto.
Clementina took the seat vacated by Poynter, and drew the child towards her.
“Won’t you give me a kiss?”
“Of course.”
She put up her little lips. The appeal to the woman was irresistible. She caught the child to her and clasped her to her bosom, and kissed her and said foolish things. When her embrace relaxed as abruptly as it had begun, the child said: