"You know where you left us just now----"
"Yes.... She told me something I think I ought to tell you."
"Oh? She didn't lose much time," I could not forbear remarking.
"It was something I know you'd far rather I told you--it was something about poor Kitty," Evie went awkwardly on.
You may guess from this "Oh?" that I had told Evie no more than I had thought fit about my meeting with Louie. Indeed, of that extraordinary walk that had begun at Swan & Edgar's corner and ended in the King's Road, Chelsea, I had told her nothing at all. When I had reached home again, at four o'clock in the morning, Evie had been in bed, Billy asleep by the ashes of the dining-room fire. He had yawned hugely and stiffly: "A-a-a-h!... I like your idea of a couple of hours in the evening, my friend! I say, you look rather done up; what have you been doing with yourself?... Evie? She went to bed at two; she would sit up till then. What time is it? Nice goings-on at the Berkeley!"
And Billy and I had lighted the fire and breakfasted, moving about quietly so as not to wake Evie. Evie did not know the exact hour of my return, and had made no remark about the condition of my hat and trousers.
It seems an odd thing to say, but I simply had not dared to tell her. When I say that she would never, never have understood I am not belittling her either; she simply would not have understood. It would have been different had I been able to tell her all, but better nothing than half. Nay, what she already knew was in its way almost too much, for of course Billy, taking studio mysteries for granted, had told her, rather as a joke against myself, of my coming upon Louie Causton. Seeing Evie's almost painful blush, he had been a little sorry he had spoken. For while Evie liked Billy, she could never get used to the idea of his models. It was a little as if some outwardly very charming person should be in reality a known dynamiter. And even when she had grasped the model (so to speak) in theory, it had only to be made a personal matter for the blood to rise into her cheeks. Suppose I had come upon Aunt Angela thus!... So, unable to tell her all, of the later events I had told her nothing.
But now she said again, looking over the quiet Fountain Court, "It's about poor Kitty. Louie didn't tell you, I suppose?" (I had admitted having had a few words with Louie.)