Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/30

 the pillow, for one of May's curling-pins pressed cruelly into her cheek. "Poor old girl," she thought. "It must be awful to be married."

Faces of men floated before her half-closed eyes. The pimply face of the son of the publican for whom she had last worked. He had squatted beside her on the floor she was wiping up, and had put his heavy arm around her and tried to kiss her. How funny his face had looked when she had slopped the soapy water over his shiny shoes. Then there came the face of Artie Blythe who had come to see her off at Southampton. Poor little Artie with his pasty clerk's face all woebegone and a funny bunch of flowers held out towards her. Then the waiter on the steamship who used to glide to her in the dark with dainties stolen from the first-cabin pantries. Then the trainman who leant over her seat to point out mountains and valleys, and teach her to say the names of the French villages. How he laughed at the way she said them! Funny creatures, men! Now, here was Kirke. She saw his piercing eyes, the pink spots on his cheek-bones, his red tie, tied just so. She couldn't help it if men liked her, wanted to stare at her and get close to her. She couldn't help it any more than her mother could. Her mother could not have been very much ashamed of having her or she would not have called her Delight. It sounded as though she'd been glad to have her. Well, anyway, God had made her the same as other folk. She began to laugh softly, opening her mouth wide in the darkness, making little clucking noises. What fun God must have had making her! Her hair for one thing. Well, even God would laugh to think of all those tight yellow curls. And her eyes—God must have laughed into them, for there was always a laugh behind them.

Oh, it was wicked to think of God in that way! Just as