“My English idiom is not yet perfect,” he said. “I ought not to have used that expression.”
Olivia laughed at his discomfiture.
“It’s generally used by dreadful people who threaten to do one another in. But the metaphor’s thrilling, all the same.”
The rain had ceased. After a few moments the mackintoshed commissionaire secured a taxi. Triona accompanied her to the door. She thrust out a frank hand.
“Au revoir. It has been delightful to find you so human.”
She drove off. He stood, with a smile on his lips, watching the vehicle disappear in the traffic. Her farewell was characteristic. What could one expect of her but the unexpected?
That was three days ago. The image of her unconsciously alluring yet frank to disconcertment, spiritually feminine yet materially impatient of sex; the image of her in the three separate settings—the dark-eyed princess in fur and flame beneath the electric light of the theatre portico; the slim girl in simple blouse and skirt who, over the pretty teacups, held so nice a balance between Olifant and himself; the gay playmate of a rainy hour, in her fawn costume (he still felt the thrill of the friendly touch of her fawn-coloured gloved hands on his sleeve)—the composite image and vision of her had filled his sleeping and waking thoughts to the destruction of his peace of mind and the dislocation of his work.
Thus, on this warm night of spring, he stood, the most foolishly romantical of mortals, at the entrance to Victoria Street, and with a shrug of his shoulders proceeded on his errand of mute troubadour. Perhaps the day of rapture might come when he would tell her how he stood in the watches of the night and gazed up at what he had to imagine was her window on the fifth floor of the undistinguished barrack that was her home. It was poetic, fantastic, Russian, at any rate. It would also mark the end of his excursion; it was a fair tramp back to South Kensington.
An unheeded taxi-cab whizzed past him as he walked; but a few seconds later, the faint sound of splintering glass and then the scrunch of brakes suddenly applied awoke him from his smiling meditations. The cab stopped, sharply outlined in the clear moonlight. The driver leaped from his seat and flung open the door. A woman sprang out, followed by a man. Both were in evening dress. Voices rose at once in altercation. Triona, suspecting an accident, quickened his pace instinctively into a run and joined the group.
“What’s up?”