“Yes,” she agreed, “I’m still thinking of Sam.”
“You and Sam!” he repeated, looking incredulously at her.
Effie nodded. “But,” she said, “I don’t know yet.”
He rose to his feet. “You’re sure, Effie? You’re sure you don’t know about him yet?”
“Then you do know about me? Effie, I’ve got to ask. Are you sure about me?”
She met his eyes bravely, knowing that she must hurt. She was sure she did not love Stewart, who was free, and not sure about Branstone, who was married. “I am quite, quite sure, Dubby,” she said softly.
“I see,” he said. “Well, I’m not the sort that pesters, but if you want me, Effie, if you find you want me, I’ll be there. I... I suppose I’d better go now. It will take some doing to change the subject after this.”
“Dubby, I’m sorry. You’re not well, and----”
“Not that, old thing,” he interrupted. “Not pity. That would make me really ill. Love’s just a thing that happens along, but one starter doesn’t make a race.” He held out his hand. “Well, doctor’s orders to go to bed early. Good-night.”
“Good-night, Dubby,” she said, and added hesitatingly: “You’ll come on Sunday?”
“Lord, yes,” he said. “I don’t love and run away. Good-night.”
She sat for a long while staring into vacancy, then found that something wet was dropping on her hands. She bathed her eyes and took the novel up again. A proposal occupied, she found, twelve pages of turgid, emotional dialogue; but, of course, her experience might be limited. Certainly it did not confirm the book’s verbosity.
She was quite sure that she did not want Dubby Stewart. He did not strike her as humorous at all.
|SEVERAL causes combined to make her think of Sam, too, as not at all humorous when she saw him in the morning. Unlike him, she was not at her best in the early hours of the day, and the strain of arriving at an office by nine a.m. was one from which she did not recover for some time. She hated business, but without that cross of early rising she might have found it almost tolerable.
She woke that day to her landlady’s rap more resentfully than usual. The world was disgustingly mismanaged. Why couldn’t she love Dubby, who was free? She couldn’t, but she hated Sam for being married, he had no right to be married. “Damn Mrs. Sam! Damn her!” she said heartily, by way of a morning prayer, as she ran hairpins viciously into her glorious hair. “But I’ll cure him of mud,” she added, as she raced downstairs to swallow the tea and toast which she took almost in the same rush that carried her from her bedroom to the tram.