In the warm sunshine, which reminded me of those perfect March days we had had on the Riviera, we wandered together across the Park, chatting merrily, she relating to me all the principal events of her toilsome life during the past six months, which comprised that period when the metropolis is at its worst, and when wet Sundays render the life of London’s workers additionally dismal. In winter the life of the shop-assistant is truly a dreary, monotonous existence, working nearly half the day by artificial light in an atmosphere unhealthily warmed by one of those suffocating abominations called gas-stoves; and if Sunday happens to be inclement there is absolutely nothing to do save to wait for the opening of the big restaurants at six o’clock in the evening. To sit idle in a café and be choked with tobacco-smoke is all the recreation which shop-assistants in London can obtain if the Day of Rest be wet.
Truly the shop-assistant’s life is an intensely dismal one. Knowing all this, I felt sorry for Muriel.
“Then the winter has been very dull,” I observed, after she had been telling me of the miserable weather and her consequent inability to get out on Sundays.
“Yes,” she answered. “I used to be envious when you wrote telling me of the sunshine and flowers you had on the Riviera. It must be a perfect Paradise. I should so like to go there and spend a winter.”
“As far as natural beauties are concerned, the coast is almost as near Paradise as you can get on this earth,” I said, laughing. “But Monte Carlo, although delightful, is far nearer an approach to the other place—the place which isn’t often mentioned in polite society—in fact, somebody once said, and with a good deal of truth, that the door of the Casino was the entrance-gate to hell.”
“I’d like to see the gambling-rooms just once,” she said.
“You are best away from them,” I answered. “The moral influence of the tables cannot fail to prove baneful.”
“I was disappointed,” she said, “when I heard you had left London without wishing me good-bye. You had never done so before. I called at your chambers, and Simes told me you had gone abroad. Surely you could have spared ten minutes to wish me farewell,” she added reproachfully.
I glanced at her and saw a look of regret and disappointment upon her face. Yes, she was undeniably beautiful.
I told myself that I had always loved Muriel, that I loved her still.