They were living in the same studio Rosaleen had once shared with Enid
and Dodo. And when Landry opened the door, he was rather impressed.
Perhaps he had unconsciously expected a garret and the blind man lying
on a pallet. And instead saw a large and imposingly artistic room, very
dark in the corners, but with a circle of light from a red-shaded lamp
on a table in the centre and Rosaleen and her husband sitting beside it.
The husband, too, was much better than he had expected; he was really a
very gentlemanly chap, and a good talker; nothing pitiful or destitute
about him. One wouldn’t have suspected him of being blind. An immense,
fat fellow with a tremendous voice, and a somewhat broad sense of
humour. He talked to Landry about the opera, for that was the only form
of art with which the young man was acquainted. He had a very decent
cigar to offer him, and he mixed an excellent cocktail.
Rosaleen, too, was different; she wore an embroidered smock of dark red
silk and she had bronze slippers and stockings, and her fine brown hair
was parted on one side and doubled under, to look like a short crop.
Landry thought she looked quite as an artist’s wife ought to look, and
charming, and adorable. She had scarcely said a word all the evening;
she had sat in silence while the two men talked, but he knew very well
that she wasn’t listening. She had an odd, preoccupied look in her eyes
which he later came to know very well....
It was a mild and somewhat flavourless evening. When the time came for
him to go, the husband invited him to come to lunch the following
Saturday, and he had said that he would.
He went home in a queer mood; he was, although he didn’t know it,
refusing to think at all, refusing to examine his impressions.