Part 9 (1/2)
”Then you had better take him under your wing,” Hal laughed. ”It would be a pity for such a paragon to be lost to society. Personally, stuffed blue-and-gold Apollos don't interest me in the least. Come along to bed. I'm dead tired,” and she dragged Lorraine away.
But instead of sleeping, the acress lay silently watching a star that shone in at her window, and thinking a little sadly about the man nature had chosen to endow so bountifully. In a few weeks she would be thirty-two and he was twenty-four.
Supposing it had been twenty-two instead of thirty-two, and out of his splendour he had given his heart to her dark beauty, what a tale it might have been - what a fairy-tale of sweet, impossible things, with a golden-haired prince and a dark-eyed princess.
She awoke from her day-dream with a touch of impatience, apostrophising herself for her folly. After all, what had a beautiful, successful woman at her prime to do with a youth of twenty-four, who played foolish games at a supper-table, and was only just beginning to know his world? Of course he would bore her intolerably at a second interview, and, closing her eyes resolutely, she drove his image from her mind.
CHAPTER VII
The second interview, however, by a mere coincidence, took place at Lorraine's flat. She was walking leisurely down Sloane Street one afternoon, after visiting hermilliners, when she ran into the young giant going in the opposite direction.
”How so?...” she asked gaily, as is face lit up with a pleased smile, and he stopped in front of her. ”Whither away at this hour? Are you chasing a brief?”
”Much too brief,” he told her. ”I had to carry some important papers to a certain well-known Cabinet Minister; and he did not even vouchsafe me a glance of his countenance. I was given an acknowledgment of them by the footman, as if I had been a messenger boy.”
”Too bad. I think you deserve that another celebrity should give you a cup of tea, to redeem your opinion of the immortals. My flat is quite near, and I am now returning. Will you come?”
”Oh, won't I?” he said boyishly, and turned back.
It was the fas.h.i.+onable hour in Sloane Street, when many well-dressed, well-known people are often seen walking, and when the road is full of private motors and carriages. Lorraine found herself moving still more slowly. She was accustomed to being gazed at herself, had in fact grown a little blase of it, but the frank admiration bestowed on her giant amused and pleased her.
Covertly she watched, as she chatted up to him, for the tell-tale consciousness and perhaps heightened colour. But when he was looking back into her face he looked straight before him, over the heads of the admiring eyes, and paid no smallest heed to them. Neither was he in the least self-conscious with her. She wondered if he even realised that the tete-a-tete he accepted so simply would have been a joy of heaven to many. Anyhow, far from resenting his seeming want of due appreciation, she found it made him more interesting.
She spoke of Hal, and he immediately exclaimed: ”Hal is a ripper, isn't she? I can't help teasing her, you know; it's the best fun in the world.”
”Do you usually tease your feminine friends?” she asked. ”I've no doubt you have a great many.”
”Oh, no, I haven't. Men pals are far jollier.”
”Still, I expect your inches bring you many fair admirers.”
He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and looked a trifle bored, and she divined that he disliked flattery and probably the subject of his appearance. She adroitly turned the conversation back to Hal, and spoke of her until they reached the block of flats.
”Is this where you live? What a ripping situation!” he exclaimed. ”I would sooner be near the river than near Knightsbridge, even if it is not so cla.s.sy.”
He followed her into the lift, and then into her charming home, full of enthusiasm, and still without exhibiting a shade of self-consciousness.
Lorraine found her interest growing momentarily, as he took up his stand on her hearth and gazed frankly around, with undisguised pleasure.
”What a jolly nice room. It's one of the prettiest I've seen. You have the same color-scheme as the d.u.c.h.ess of Medstone in het boudoir, but I like your furniture better.”
Lorraine glanced up a little surprised.
”Do you know the d.u.c.h.ess of Medstone?”
”Well, yes” - a trifle bashfully. ”You see, those sort of people ask me to their houses because of my cricket. Private cricket weeks are rather fas.h.i.+onable, and I get invitations as the late Oxford captain.”
”And do you go to people you don't know?”
”Yes, rather, if I can raise the funds. The nuisance is the tipping.