Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/48

 watching him. He saw the gleam of her hair, and two eyes, very dark, like the eyes of a creature watching him from the gloom of a wood. He fancied that she smiled.

He tried to concentrate his senses upon the mere glassy surface of the mirror, and to keep his vision and its accompanying thoughts from passing through to the deeps of it where the woman was, but he could not help focusing her. She remained there, watching him, enigmatic, motionless, like a great tawny cat. Sorrell decided to leave the mirror. He came down the steps, and was folding them up when he heard her voice.

"Stephen"

"Yes, madam."

"There is a glass in here. It hasn't been touched since—since"

She laughed as he stood in the doorway with the steps and bucket.

"Since Adam and Eve."

Sorrell obeyed her with an air of great briskness. The mirror was over the mantelpiece, a gilt-framed thing of the "Regency" period, and when he got on the steps he found that the top of the frame was black with dust. Florence Palfrey had picked up a paper that had been lying on the sofa, but instead of reading it she fanned herself with it, for the day was hot.

"Anyone in the lounge?"

"No."

Sorrell came down the steps to dip his leather in the bucket.

"Very warm to-day."

She did not reply, but watched him get to work, and his movements told her that he was nervous. She was satisfied in a part of herself. And then she began to talk to him with an air of casual intimacy, and in a way that she had never talked before. He was both Captain Sorrell, and M.C., and her "boots" and porter.

"Rather different from the war, Stephen."

He agreed. He felt strangely alert.

"How did you get your M.C.?"

"I didn't know"

"Oh,—I know most things. Well? How?"

"Oh, in a trench raid."