Part 28 (2/2)
”You understand then that I do feel emotion?”
”Why, of course. A man of your brains and cultivation could not behave in so foolish a way otherwise.”
He drew back and leaned against the mantelpiece while he laughed shortly.
Katherine continued to work.
”I am merely waiting until you have finished directing those confounded parcels, which I presume are for this post--and then I am going to coax you to talk to me--May I smoke?”
”Yes, if you like--” still with lowered head.
”Won't you have a cigarette?”
”Thanks.”
He handed her one from his case. She pulled a box of matches near and lit it casually, going on with her work as a boy might have done--There was no knocking off of ash or graceful movement of the hand in the fas.h.i.+on of Lao, who loved her white jewelled fingers to be seen to advantage.
Neither of them spoke. He might not have been in the room as far as she was concerned! He, on the contrary, was profoundly aware of her presence. Emotion such as he had not felt for years was surging through him.
She was the most d.a.m.nably attractive creature, he thought, he had ever met. She awoke primitive pa.s.sions, and stirred his blood. There was that intense note of reality and strength about her. She was like some dangerous lazy lioness. She made him feel that civilisation was slipping from him, and that he could willingly seize her for a jungle mate.
She, however, continued to smoke and to write for quite ten minutes, until all the parcels were addressed, and several papers examined and annotated and filed. Then she looked up. His eyes had never left her face.
”I can't think how you can stare like that,” she said, with abominable matter-of-factness. ”It would make me blink.”
”I can enjoy looking at the sun--Now are those infernal things finished?
I have been waiting with the patience of Job.”
”But I can't think what for?”
”To talk to you.”
”Well, talk then! I must do some typing,” and she got up and went to her machine, which was on another table by the window. She knew perfectly well that she was driving him mad; it gave her a savage pleasure, and seemed a sort of balance to her own emotions on Christmas night about Algy.
He came and leant against the mantelpiece and looked down at her and quoted Dryden:
”She knows her man, and when you rant and swear Can draw you to her with a single hair.”
and stretching out his hand, he touched for an instant the faint broad waves on her forehead.
And now he saw her eyes flash brilliantly enough!
”If you are going to be impertinent, Mr. Strobridge, the staircase into the garden is quite close, and the sooner you find your way to it, the better I shall be pleased.”
”I would not be impertinent for the world--the temptation was overwhelming; it is so lovely, your hair--”
His voice was quite sincere, and it was not in her plan to quarrel with him.
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