I really am anxious about
her. Please!"
"I will promise that," he answered.
"Wait one moment, then," she begged, turning to the letters by
her side. "There is just something I want to ask you. Don't be
impatient--it is entirely a matter of business."
All the time he was acutely conscious of that restless desire to
get out of the room. The woman's white arms, from which the
sleeves of her blue gown had fallen back, were stretched towards
him as she lazily turned over her pile of correspondence. They
were very beautiful arms and Tavernake, although he had had no
experience, was dimly aware of the fact. Her eyes, too, seemed
always to be trying to reach some part of him which was dead, or
as yet unborn. He could feel her striving to get there, beating
against the walls of his indifference. Why should a woman wear
blue stockings because she had a blue gown, he wondered idly.
She was not like Beatrice, this alluring, beautiful woman, who
lay there talking to him in a manner whose meaning came to him
only in strange, bewildering flashes. He could be with Beatrice
and feel the truth of what he had once told her--that her sex was
a thing which need not even be taken into account between them.
With this woman it was different; he felt that she wished it to
be different.
"Perhaps you had better tell me about that matter of business
next time I am here," he suggested, with an abruptness which was
almost brusque. "I must go now.
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