Chapters (30)
‘It really isn’t worth disagreeing with; I was only talking for the fun of the thing. Of course I don’t believe that more than anything else.’ They had been walking under the windows of their own Hotel, and she now paused in the gateway with the light from the Hotel door streaming out on to her, looking at him remotely, as a gipsy might look over the garden fence at a householder mowing his lawn. ‘I dare say,’ her look said, ‘that in your encumbered kind of way you are happy. I am not, in any way, and I don’t want to be.’ It was with this air at once complacent and desolate that she seemed proposing to part from him, for she glanced at her wrist-watch, murmured something in the nature of a farewell and slipped ahead.
‘Oh, I say!’ exclaimed Milton helplessly, and racked his brains for something further to say to her.
‘What?’ asked Sydney, looking down from the steps and with faint impatience swinging her racquet.
‘I hope you didn’t think I was offended?’ said he wildly.
‘No. Why should you be?’
‘What you said about churches … I was afraid you might have thought——’
‘Well,’ said Sydney, ‘it’s no use trying not to offend people, so I don’t think I ever think much one way or the other. I’ve given up listening agonizedly for the possible reverberations of every remark which, if you’ll forgive me saying so, I think you do.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said he, with the humility of twenty years’ seniority.
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter a bit. Good night.’ He had pulled open the swing-door for her and she passed through it ahead of him, trailing her cloak which had slipped away from her shoulders. He gathered up the fringe of this from the floor and handed it to her. ‘Why good night?’ said he, and several people sitting about the lounge looked up in astonishment. ‘I mean, don’t we see each other at dinner?’
‘Oh well, of course we see each other at dinner.’ Sydney glanced round the lounge, took note of the astonished faces and, after another slight bow to Milton, went upstairs slowly, humming a tune.