He hesitated and felt himself flushing.
"Yes?"
"Lady Barbara—, I don't understand you, I don't begin to understand you."
"You won't write a good play till you do," she laughed. "All your women are romantic dolls. We're much better and much worse than you think. But that wasn't what you started to say."
"I know. … Well, you oughtn't to have come to my rooms last night. And you oughtn't to have come to-day, though that wasn't as bad. … What d'you imagine people like Grierson or Manders think? What d'you imagine Mabel Elstree thinks, when you sit with your head against my knee?"
She withdrew her arm and walked for some time without speaking.
"I'm sorry if I'm compromising you with your friends," she said at length.
"And whether you compromise yourself doesn't matter?"
"I suppose I'm used to it," she sighed; then, with one of her April changes, the sigh turned into a provocative laugh. "If you don't mind being compromised by me, I'd make you write a wonderful play. My technique's so good. All you have to do is to fall in love with me——"
"I shan't have the opportunity," he interrupted. "We meet to-night at Mrs. Shelley's——"
"And we were so positive that we weren't going!" she murmured. "You don't want to see me again?"
Eric hailed a passing taxi.
"I like meeting you," he told her frankly enough. "You amuse me—and you interest me enormously. But I've work to do … for one thing. … "
She seated herself in the taxi and held out her hand through the window.
"You might come and call for me to-night," she suggested.
Eric shook his head. He was shy of entering a house to which he had not been officially admitted, confronting a strange butler, being pushed into a room to wait for her, meeting and explaining himself to Lord Crawleigh or one of the brothers, who would look superciliously at "Babs' latest capture." …
"I'll meet you at Mrs. Shelley's," he said.
The hand was withdrawn, and he could see her biting her lip.
"I'm sorry," she murmured.
"There's no need to be."
"I was apologizing to myself—for giving you another opportunity of refusing something I asked you to do for me."
Eric walked back to his flat, puzzled and irritated. The girl was intolerably spoiled; nothing that you did was right, there was altogether too much wear and tear in trying to adapt yourself to her moods. …
Even if you wanted to. …
3
The rehearsal, despite Barbara, was over in good time, and Eric could lie unhurriedly in his bath without fear of being late for Mrs. Shelley's dinner. Two days of his holiday had already slipped away, and he had made little mark on the work which he had schemed to do. To-morrow he would start in earnest. …
Barbara. … He could not remember what had set him thinking about her. She looked desperately ill, but that was not his fault, nor could he cure her; which disposed of Barbara. … What she needed was some one who would pull her up, steady her, master her. … Unfortunately—for her—he could not spare the time; nor was it part of his scheme of life to effect her physical and moral regeneration. … And it was now the moment to begin dressing.
Mrs. Shelley's house lay between Sloane Square and the river; and Eric arrived punctually to find her insipidly grateful to him for coming. A self-conscious Chelsea party was assembling; there were two war-poets, whose "Trench Songs" and "Emancipation," compensating want of finish with violence of feeling, had made thoughtless critics wonder whether the Great War would engender a new Elizabethan splendour of genius; there was Mrs. Manisty, who claimed young poets as of right and helped them to parturition in the pages of the Utopia Review; there was a flamboyant, short-haired young woman who had launched on the world a war-emergency code of sex-morals under the guise of a novel; there were three bashful aliens suspected of being pianists and one self-assured journalist who told Mrs. Shelley with suitable heartiness that he had not met Mr. Lane, but of course he knew his work and went on to ask Eric if he was engaged on a new "work." The flamboyant woman, Eric observed, talked much of "creation" and its antecedent labour; the trench poets, with professional modesty, referred to their "stuff." A fourth alien entered and was greeted and introduced in halting French, to which he replied in rapid and faultless English.
Eric looked round on a triumph of ill-assortment. He came here partly out of old friendship for his hostess, but chiefly for fear of seeming to avoid a section of society which at least took itself seriously. There was no question of a Byronic descent on Chelsea; these people would ever cringe before the face of success and disparage behind its back, as they had always done; they made a suburb and called it a school. For ten years Eric had listened to their theories and discoveries; after ten years he was still waiting for achievement. The very house, with its "art" shades of upholstery, its hammered brass fenders, its wooden nooks and angles filled with ramshackle bookcases, hard seats and inadequately stuffed cushions, was artificial; it was make-believe, pretentious, insincere. …
"Lady Barbara Neave."
There was a rustle of excitement, the more noticeable against the conscientious effort of several not to seem interested. Eric smiled to himself, as the young journalist, interrupted in his discourse on "the aristocracy of illiterates," watched Barbara's entry and posed himself for being introduced. She looked round with slow assurance, fully conscious of the lull in conversation and of the eyes that were taking stock of her. Eric felt an artistic admiration for her way of silently dominating a room.
"Am I late, dear Marion?" she asked, with the smile of startled recognition which made men and women anxious to throw protecting arms round her thin shoulders. "Eric and I have been rehearsing our play—the new one, I mean, that I'm taking in hand—and I had such a lot to do when I got home." She displayed adequate patience, while Mrs. Shelley completed her introductions, and then crossed to Eric's corner. "Glad to see me again?" she whispered. "I've decided that you're to lunch with us on Saturday."
"And I've decided to gladden the hearts of my family by going down to Winchester," he answered.
"But you must go later. I'll come with you, if you'll find a practicable train; I'm going to Crawleigh. Say you'd like to travel down with me."
"I make a practice of sleeping in the train," he answered.
"You won't on Saturday. Sometimes, Eric, I find your little practices and habits and rules rather tiresome; I must educate you out of them. By the way, I want to be seen home to-night."
It was a disappointing dinner for Eric, as, after coming to gratify Barbara, he was separated from her by the length of the table. In conversation Mrs. Shelley always gave people what was good for them rather than what they liked; Barbara was accordingly set next to an art editor, who tried to wheedle from her an article on "Eastern Decoration in Western Houses," while Eric found himself sandwiched without hope of escape between Mrs. Manisty, who discussed poetry which he had not read, and the flamboyant novelist, who had lately discovered and insisted on exposing a mutual-admiration ring in the novel-reviewers of the London press.
If dull, the meal was at least not so embarrassing as his dinner of the night before with Lady Poynter. Barbara seemed chilled by uncongenial company, though she touched his hand on her way to the door and turned, with patent consciousness that she was being watched, to give him a parting smile. Mrs. Manisty also turned, before she could control her curiosity, to see for whom the smile was intended. And, as Eric threw away his match after lighting