We had arranged a little excursion for the following Saturday, the four of us--Evie and Archie, and Kitty and myself. We were to wander on Wimbledon Common.
"I never really knew her well, Jeff, understood her, I mean," she went on, "but after all I did see a good deal of her. It's horrible, when I remember the things she used to say.... And--and--you've made such a difference to me, darling--I wasn't going--to be married--before.... I should like to go, Jeff--just once," she begged.
"You wouldn't commit yourself to anything?"
"No. She says she couldn't bear it. She cried half last night as it is."
"Then you'd call on your way next Saturday, and meet the three of us later?"
"Very well," I concluded. "You'd better go."
She threw her arms impulsively about my neck.
Then a change came over her. I think the change began with the failure of the supply of gas from the penny-in-the-slot meter. She had arranged for her little party a pink tissue-paper shade about her milky globe, an idea she had borrowed from Woburn Place; and slowly its colour faded. I had several pennies in my pocket. Quickly I felt for them.
But she moved closer to me. I was still on my knees by her deck-chair.
"Don't bother about it--just for once, Jeff," she murmured.
She could do it with impunity now. After what had passed our situation could hardly be commonplace, and our nearness was as little compromising as nearness ever can be. She luxuriated in her little perilous letting-go--could toy with, and yet be immune from, a danger.
Slowly the gas expired, and the firelight glowed on the blue and white check tablecloth and the disarray of tea-things upon it. On the back wall of the restaurant yard was a square of orange light which the shadow of a waiter's head crossed from time to time. I don't know that with some men--Mackie, for instance--her position would have been all she supposed it to be, but, poor heart, she had had little enough experience from which to surmise that. And I myself could hardly be said to be there at all. She lay in my arms; and in whatever false sweet fancies she lay endrowsed she was not alone. I had my torturing vision too. It was neither of her nor of Louie Causton, that vision. I was trying to persuade myself that she was another than Kitty Windus.