"I am not at home to any one except Sir Hugh Maine," Mrs Glinn said to
the footman. "You understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
He went out softly and closed the door.
The English summer had gone back upon its steps that afternoon, and
remembered the duty it owed to its old-time reputation. The canary, a
puffed-out ball of ragged-looking feathers in its cage, seemed listening
with a depressed attention to the beat of the cold rain against the
window. The daisies, in their boxes, dripped and nodded in the wind.
There was a darkness in the pretty room, and the smile of the china
goblins was no longer yellow. Like many people who are not made of
china, they depended upon adventitious circumstances for much of their
outward show. When they were not gilded there was a good deal of the
pill apparent in their nature.
Mrs Glinn was trying not to be restless. She was very pale, and her dark
eyes gleamed with an almost tragic fire; but she sat down firmly on the
white sofa, and read Gyp, as Carmen may have read her doom in the cards.
One by one the pages were turned. One by one the epigrams were made the
property of another mind. But through all the lightness and humour of
the story there crept like a little snake a sentence that Gyp had not
written:--
"Can I tell him?"
And no answer ever came to that question. When the door-bell at last
rang, Mrs Glinn laid down her novel carefully, and mechanically stood
up. A change of attitude was necessary to her.
Sir Hugh came in, and was followed by tea. They sat down by the tiny
table, and discussed French literature. Flaubert and Daudet go as well
with tea as Fielding and Smollett go with supper.
But, when the cups were put down, Maine drove the French authors in a
pack out of the conversation.
"I did not come here to say what I can say to every woman I meet who
understands French," he remarked.
And then Mrs Glinn was fully face to face with her particular guardian
devil.
"No?" she said.
She did not try to postpone the moment she dreaded. For she had a strong
man to deal with, and, being a strong woman at heart, she generally held
out her hand to the inevitable.
"You have been thinking?" Maine went on.
"Yes. What a sad occupation that is sometimes--like knitting, or
listening to church-bells at night!"
"Eve, let us be serious."
"God knows I am," she answered. "But modern gravity is dressed in
flippancy. No feeling must go quite naked."
"Don't talk like that," he said. "As there is a nudity in art that may
be beautiful, so there is a nudity in expression, in words, that may be
beautiful. Eve, I have come to hear you tell me something. You know
that." He glanced into her face with an anxiety that she did not fully
understand. Then he said: "Tell it me."
"There is--is so much to tell," she said.
"Yes, yes."
"He does not understand," she thought.