Page:Love and Mr. Lewisham – Wells (1899).djvu/149

Rh decoration and structural instability, and on them an array of glittering poets, Shelley, Rossetti, Keats, Browning, and odd volumes of Ruskin, South Place Sermons, Socialistic publications in torn paper covers, and above, science text-books and note-books in an oppressive abundance. The autotypes that hung about the room were eloquent of æsthetic ambitions and of a certain impermeability to implicit meanings. There was the Mirror of Venus by Burne Jones, Rossetti's Annunciation, Lippi's Annunciation, and the Love of Life and Love and Death of Watts. And among other photographs was one of last year's Debating Society Committee, Lewisham smiling a little weakly near the centre, and Miss Heydinger out of focus in the right wing. And Miss Heydinger sat with her back to all these things, in her black horsehair arm-chair, staring into the fire, her eyes hot, and her chin on her hand.

"I might have guessed—before," she said. "Ever since that séance. It has been different "

She smiled bitterly. "Some shop girl "

She mused. "They are all alike, I suppose. They come back—a little damaged, as the woman says in "Lady Windermere's Fan". Perhaps he will. I wonder

"Why should he be so deceitful? Why should he act to me? "

"Pretty, pretty, pretty—that is our business.