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212 "Shut up, blast it, can't you?"

"Very well. . . . Are you going?"

"Yes."

He was outside the door.

"Are you cross with me?"

"No, but this talkee-talkee bores me. That's not what I come to you for. . . ."

"No, I know you don't. . . . But, still, you can't mind my talking to you sometimes, Gerrit? . . ."

"Very likely, but not such twaddle. And I won't have you mention my children."

"I won't do it again. Good-bye, Gerrit."

"Good-night."

He looked round, in the passage, and nodded to her. In the dim light of the room, he saw her standing, framed in the half-open doorway; she stood there, a handsome, slender, willowy figure, in a shimmer of dull gold: the light, the yellow tea-gown, the touches of gold lace round the very white neck, the strange gold hair round the powdered white face and, under the sharp line of the eyebrows, the golden eyes, with a golden gleam. Her voice, all the evening, had sounded very soft and coaxing in his ears, as though crooning a plaintive song, of youth, of memories, of the past, of longing for her native country. . . and for him: all unnatural and impossible things in her, things which he only heard in her voice because of his confounded sentimentality, a sentimentality which, however