Page:Thunder on the Left (1925).djvu/63

 thought. The queer little boyish thing! I can just imagine her. It would be blue, a kind of filmy blue crêpe. Coming up the stairs the morning sunlight would catch her, through those big windows: her small curves delicately outlined in a haze of soft colour, her hair tousled, a flash of white ankle as she reached the top step. He would sit up on the window seat, as though just drowsily awakened. Oh. . . good-morning! Good-morning. What a picture you would make. Silhouette Before Breakfast. Life is full of so many heavenly pictures. . . . The bay window above the garden would be calm and airy in the before-breakfast freshness of July; the house just beginning that dreamy stir that precedes the affairs of day. She would come across to him. . . he had hardly dared admit, even to himself, how far they had gone in imagination. . ..

"I'm damned if I want strange women careering all over the house in their wrappers," he said with well-simulated peevishness.

"Bosh!" exclaimed Phyllis. "There's nothing you'd like better. Unless without their wrappers."

"What's the use of being vulgar?" he said. He thought: How gorgeous Phyllis is. You can't fool her.