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Subjects
In: Romance·Novels·British Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #65387.
The opening · free to read
The man smiled thoughtfully, staring straight ahead. With a faint frown the girl regarded the leisurely disintegration of the logs in the grate. The distant throb of ragtime filtered into the room, only to subside, as though abashed, before the stately lecture of a Vulliamy clock.
“Let us talk,” said Eve, “of the past.”
“Good,” said Jeremy. “I’ll begin. If I’d been brought up to be a plumber, instead of a diplomat——”
“Oh, I wish you had,” said Eve. “My bath’s gone wrong again.”
“What, not the Roman?”
“The same,” said Eve.
“There you are,” said Broke. “I told you not to have it. You cannot introduce a relic of the Stone Age into a super-flat. It can’t be done. If you must have a circus leading out of your bedroom, the only thing to do is to set it right up and then build a house round it.”
“We’re off,” said Eve, bubbling.
Jeremy swallowed.
“What’s the trouble?” he demanded.
“Won’t empty,” said Eve. “I’m—I’m having it taken away.”
“Taken away?” cried Broke.
“Well, filled in or something. I don’t know what the process will be. I simply said it was to be washed out and an ordinary bath put in its place.”
“Why on earth?”
“Because experience has shown me that your advice was good. Between you and me, it nearly always is—though why you keep on giving it me when I only chuck it away, Heaven only knows. I should have got mad months ago. I think you must be very—very strong, Jeremy. At least, I’m very conscious of being the—the weaker vessel.”
“A most appropriate sensation.”
Eve shot him a lightning glance.
“It was,” said Eve. “May Day 1929. Here in this house. . . . Jeremy, I’ve a confession to make. I asked that you should be introduced to me.”
“Well, I asked too.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to know you,” said Jeremy Broke.
“Why?”
“I suppose you attracted me.”
“I must be attractive,” said Eve.
“You are.”
Miss Carew shrugged her white shoulders.
“I’m still unmarried,” she said.
“That,” said Jeremy Broke, “is your little fault. At least, Rumour has it that you’ve turned a good many down.”
“Rumour is wrong,” said Eve. “I admit I’ve had one or two overtures, but the idea of being married for my money never appealed to me.”
“I shouldn’t have thought,” said Broke, “that you need be afraid. If you were forty, instead of twenty-four; if you had a face like the back of a hansom; if——”
“Here,” said Eve. “Don’t cut out the gilt. There was the making of a compliment. Besides, I value your opinion. What is my face like, Jeremy?”
The man regarded her.
“It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“My mouth,” said Eve, “is too large.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Broke. “It’s just perfect. So’s your nose, an’—an’ the rest. That’s why it seems so wicked to cut your hair.”
“Was it my face that attracted you—last year?”
The man considered.
“Your face and your pretty ways.”
“You just felt you wanted to know me?”
“Yes.”
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