"I'll unpack the bananas," she said, as Dorothy laid the broom aside.
Deftly she unpacked the bananas; skilfully she took the oranges from their tissue-paper, dropping the tissue-paper on the floor. She arranged them on a large apple-green dish, which she set on the gate-legged table; and then she stood back surveying the colour and grouping while Dorothy peppered and salted and prepared to cook the three-quarters of a pound of steak. She turned the dish this way and that, seeking fresh lights to put it in. Amory's work was never done. Often she was busiest when she seemed most idle. _She_ could not say to eye and brain, as Dorothy could say to mere hands, "It is finished now ... you may rest...." It was not finished even when Dorothy had set the table, cooked the steak, and made all ready for serving. There were the yellow bananas and the glowing oranges to paint in her mind, on the white cloth now instead of on the oaken board....
They dined and cleared away, and, while Dorothy washed up, Amory replaced the dish of fruit on the table, set out the biscuits and cakes on the Persian Rose plates, and made of all, with the flask of Chianti, another still-life group. Then she disposed the chairs as if by happy accident, and poked the fire. The casement looking over the river became an oblong of dim blue; the fire burnt up, and glowed on the black and sagging old ceiling; and Amory hoped that the people overhead were going to be quiet to-night.
Then, at a little after eight, there came from outside, somewhere beyond the Pier Hotel, the sound of a baritone voice. It was Walter Wyron, singing "The Raggle-taggle Gipsies." Amory started up.
"Here they come!" she cried, clapping her hands.
And she ran down the stairs to meet them.
Amory liked people to be one thing or the other; that was the real reason why she loathed and abhorred Glenerne. She had had ripping times amid the naphtha-lights of the Saturday night street-markets and at Bank Holiday merry-go-rounds and cocoanut-shies; and, of course, when Van Eeden on Dreams came up for discussion, or Galton on Heredity, or Pater on the Renaissance, or the clear-eyed Weiniger on the Relation of the Sexes, she was again entirely at home. On the heights or in the depths she felt the real throb of Humanity's heart. But those dreadful middle grades! Those terrible estate-agents and booking-clerks and bank-cashiers and brewers' travellers of whom the world seemed to be so full! As so many phenomena in the science of vision--solid objects for colour to possess and light to fall upon--she admitted they had their uses; but she was entirely uninterested in them otherwise. Of all the fine things Cosimo had done in the past, she thought he had done nothing finer nor more full of profound meaning than when he had once given a crossing-sweeper a shilling, taken the broom from his hand, and for an hour swept the crossing himself. It took true nobility to do that. Mr. Geake could not have done it, nor Mr. Wellcome, nor the egregious young man in the green knitted waistcoat who had advised her to take care of her eyes, and had then told her that the Crystal Palace was a "funny place to go for a squeeze"--Mr. Edmondson.