He was able, therefore, to meet Perkins’s leer with a look of puzzled interrogation.
“I don’t quite understand, Mr. Perkins. I think you’ve all my accounts there, and I owe you thirteen pounds, five shillings and threepence; perhaps you’ll give me a receipt.”
In the look that they exchanged as Mr. Perkins respectfully handed Roland the receipt, each recognized the beginning of a long antagonism.
Roland walked out of the room jauntily. He had had the best of the first skirmish.
This victory put him on excellent terms with himself, and, later, a bottle of excellent Burgundy at lunch wooed him to so kindly a sympathy for his fellow-beings that any leader of advanced political opinions would have found him an easy victim to any theory of world-brotherhood. As, however, no harbinger of the new world accosted him on his way from the City to Charing Cross Station, Roland was free to focus his entire sympathy upon the forlorn figure of April. He thought of her suddenly just outside Terry’s Theater, and the remembrance of his behavior to her on the night before caused him to collide violently with an elderly gentleman who was walking in the opposite direction. But he did not stop to apologize; his sentimentality held a minor to his guilt. What a selfish beast he had been. How miserable he must have made her. She must have so looked forward to his return. He had hardly written to her while he had been away. Poor little April, so sweet, so gentle. A wave of tenderness for her consumed him. They had shared so much together; he had confided in her his hopes and his ambitions. He worked himself into a temper of self-abasement. He must go to her at once and beg forgiveness.
He found her sitting in the arm-chair before the fire. She raised her eyes in mild amazement, surprised that he should visit her at such a time. She did not know how she should comport herself. Her dignity told her that she should rise and receive him coldly, but her instinct counseled her to remain seated and hear what he had to say. She obeyed her instinct. Roland flung his hat and stick on the cushioned window-seat and precipitated himself at her feet. She tried to push him away, but his voice murmuring the word “darling” overmastered her, and she let him put his arms round her and draw her head upon his shoulder.