“And--of course, the man might have come to me!”
“One does not always say what one ought.”
“I have made the child a present of some clothes which she badly needed. So far as I know, that's all I've done!”
This wonderful “of course” acted on Hilary like a tonic. He said dryly:
“I?” No gust of the east wind, making the young leaves curl and shiver, the gas jets flare and die down in their lamps, could so have nipped the flower of amity. Through Hilary's mind flashed Stephen's almost imploring words: “Oh, I wouldn't go to her! Women are so funny!”
He looked round. A blue gauze scarf was wrapped over his wife's dark head. There, in her corner, as far away from him as she could get, she was smiling. For a moment Hilary had the sensation of being stiffed by fold on fold of that blue gauze scarf, as if he were doomed to drive for ever, suffocated, by the side of this woman who had killed his love for her.
“You will do what you like, of course,” she said suddenly.
A desire to laugh seized Hilary. “What do you wish me to do?” “You will do what you like, of course!” Could civilised restraint and tolerance go further?
“B.” he said, with an effort, “the wife is jealous. We put the girl into that house--we ought to get her out.”
“From the first,” she said, “the girl has been your property; do what you like with her. I shall not meddle.”
“I am not in the habit of regarding people as my property.”
“No need to tell me that--I have known you twenty years.”
Doors sometimes slam in the minds of the mildest and most restrained of men.
“Oh, very well! I have told you; you can see Hughs when he comes--or not, as you like.”
Blanca suddenly sat forward, and threw back the blue scarf, as though she, too, were stifling. In her flushed face her eyes were bright as stars; her lips quivered.
“Is it likely,” she said, “that I should listen? That's enough, please, of these people.”
Hilary bowed. The cab, bearing them fast home, turned into the last short cut. This narrow street was full of men and women circling round barrows and lighted booths. The sound of coarse talk and laughter floated out into air thick with the reek of paraffin and the scent of frying fish. In every couple of those men and women Hilary seemed to see the Hughs, that other married couple, going home to wedded happiness above the little model's head. The cab turned out of the gay alley.