Part 10 (2/2)

”It is possible that it is simple when one is English. But English--that is as if to say Chinese. Everything contrary. Here is a pen.”

”No. I have my fountain-pen.” He hated a cheap pen, and still more a penny bottle of ink, but somehow this particular penny bottle of ink seemed touching in its simple ugliness. She was eminently teachable.

He would teach her his own att.i.tude towards penny bottles of ink....

Of course she would need the telephone--that could not be denied.

As Christine was signing the form Marthe entered with the chrysanthemums, which he had handed over to her; she had arranged them in a horrible blue gla.s.s vase cheaply gilded; and while Marthe was putting the vase on the small table there was a ring at the outer door. Marthe hurried off.

Christine said, kissing him again tenderly:

”Thou art a squanderer! Fine for me to tell thee not to buy costly flowers! Thou has spent at least ten s.h.i.+llings for these. With ten s.h.i.+llings--”

”No, no!” he interrupted her. ”Five.” It was a fib. He had paid half a guinea for the few flowers, but he could not confess it.

They could hear a powerful voice indistinctly booming at the top of the stairs. ”Two callers on one afternoon!” G.J. reflected. And yet she had told him she went out for the first time only the day before yesterday! He scarcely liked it, but his reason rescued him from the puerility of a grievance against her on this account. ”And why not?

She is bound to be a marked success.”

Marthe returned to the drawing-room and shut the door.

”Madame--” she began, slightly agitated.

”Speak, then!” Christine urged, catching her agitation.

”It is the police!”

G.J. had a shock. He knew many of the policemen who lurked in the dark doorways of Piccadilly at night, had little friendly talks with them, held them for excellent fellows. But a policeman invading the flat of a courtesan, and himself in the flat, seemed a different being from the honest stalwarts who threw the beams of lanterns on the key-holes of jewellers' shops.

Christine steeled herself to meet the crisis with self-reliance. She pointedly did not appeal to the male.

”Well, what is it that he wants?”

”He talks of the chimney. It appears this morning there was a chimney on fire. But since we burn only anthracite and gas--He knows madame's name.”

There was a pause. Christine asked sharply and mysteriously:

”How much do you think?”

”If madame gave five pounds--having regard to the _chic_ of the quarter.”

Christine rushed into the bedroom and came back with a five-pound note.

”Here! Chuck that at him--politely. Tell him we are very sorry.”

”Yes, madame.”

”But he'll never take it. You can't treat the London police like that!” G.J. could not help expostulating as soon as Marthe had gone.

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