"I'm glad," he answered quietly, "you didn't just strike me that way."
I wanted to cry like a silly kid, and yet I wanted to be a woman of the
world and sting and say clever, lashing things full of prettily covered
up spite.
I wanted to feel old and hard and bad, and I could only feel young and
inadequate and tearful and sniffy, and I hadn't even got a handkerchief.
I opened the piano. I was thinking how horrid it is to have our parents
thrust upon us, and have to do humiliating things for them that put you
in a false position with the people you love best. My brain was a
tangled bunch of rebellious "whys?" all squirming like blind kittens.
"Do you mind if I strum?" I asked.
"Please do," Cheneston answered courteously. "Will my smoking worry
you?"
"Oh no," I said carelessly, and what I wanted to say was, "Don't you
even care enough to ask me why I want that five hundred pounds from you?
It's positively insulting of you just to give it to me without a single
query as to its destination. How dare you--dare you--dare you think I
am the sort of young woman who calmly asks for five hundred pounds for
pin-money! Your silence implies that you _think_ I am."
The long narrow drawing-room looked so beautiful, so dainty, so fresh.
The candle-light was reflected softly on the white panelled walls; the
fierce little blue lobelia on the quaint grey chintz seemed to stand
out, and the moonlight coming through the french diamond-paned windows
lay in pools on the grey carpet like stagnant water--the room was so big
that the mellow candlelight never spread to there.
It was all so big and grave and stately that I felt like an angry
mosquito--and yet fate had behaved rottenly to me, assigned to me an
ignoble part.
I chose the wonderful love-song from "Samson and Delilah," and I forgot
Cheneston, I forgot the room, and the blue dragon-pots of late madonna
lilies. I forgot myself--only the scent of the lilies stayed and
drenched me with indescribable sweetness, and I seemed to struggle down
into the soul of Delilah and understand why she hated and yet loved
Samson for his strength, as I hated and loved Cheneston for his.
Cheneston was sitting in the arm-chair, gripping the sides, and when I
stopped he lit another cigarette.