Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/94

 evening clothes hung loosely on his thin frame, and, in the daylight, showed green and shiny. To Pearl he was an exquisite. She noted his long pointed chin, the little dab of dark whisker before each ear, and his slender tapering fingers.

Two respectable unmarried sisters denied themselves things that they needed in order to send him the remittance that kept him out of England. He was always months behind with his board money. Mrs. Jessop would have turned him out but Bastien had a tender spot in his heart for Silk. He was proud of him, too. He was an institution, and travellers would ask after him when once they had made his acquaintance. Not every hotel could afford to keep an elegant derelict, such as he, drifting about its corridors and bar. At The British American House, for instance, everyone had to pay at the tick, but The Duke of York could afford to be open-handed.

So Silk stayed on, mysterious, out of a mysterious past, sickly, cringing, arrogant in turn. Leaning towards Pearl, he looked like a drooping fungus growth beside a blowsy pink peony.

"My dear, beautiful girl," he said thickly, "I can't bear to see your hands in that dreadful dish-water—that—er—obscene dish-water."

"Oh, that's all right." She smiled into his eyes.

"No, it's all wrong," he mourned. "That little rosy palm from which I drank pure cold water should not be polluted by filthy washings from unspeakable plates, licked by factory hands."

"Oh, Mr. Silk, they don't lick them. They'd be insulted if they heard you say such things."

"I want to insult them. I want to insult everyone in the world but you."

Pearl's head drooped towards him. "You'll make me