Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/442

434 “Don’t you?” she exclaimed, adding with a smile, “Those are the most wonderful things in the world, those little things”—she began to him a Débussy idiom. He could not answer her on the point, so he sat with the arrow sticking in him, and did not speak.

She enquired of him concerning Meg and his children and the affairs of Eberwich, but the interest was flimsy, as she preserved a wide distance between them, although apparently she was so unaffected and friendly. We left before eleven.

When we were seated in the cab and rushing down hill, he said:

“You know, she makes me mad.”

He was frowning, looking out of the window away from me.

“Who, Lettie? Why, what riles you?” I asked.

He was some time in replying.

“Why, she’s so affected.”

I sat still in the small, close space and waited.

“Do you know——?” he laughed, keeping his face averted from me. “She makes my blood boil. I could hate her.”

“Why?” I said gently.

“I don’t know. I feel as if she’d insulted me. She does lie, doesn’t she?”

“I didn’t notice it,” I said, but I knew he meant her shirking, her shuffling of her life.

“And you think of those poor devils under the bridge—and then of her and them frittering away themselves and money in that idiocy——”

He spoke with passion.

“You are quoting Longfellow,” I said.