Why not come back and have tea with
me?" she suggested, half moved by a desire to know more of his affairs,
and half by the thought that a talk with him might help to shed some
light on hers.
In the open taxi-cab he seemed to recover his sense of well-being, and
leaned back, his hands on the knob of his stick, with the air of a man
pleasantly aware of his privileges. "This Paris is a thundering good
place," he repeated once or twice as they rolled on through the crush
and glitter of the afternoon; and when they had descended at Undine's
door, and he stood in her drawing-room, and looked out on the
horse-chestnut trees rounding their green domes under the balcony, his
satisfaction culminated in the comment: "I guess this lays out West End
Avenue!"
His eyes met Undine's with their old twinkle, and their expression
encouraged her to murmur: "Of course there are times when I'm very
lonely."
She sat down behind the tea-table, and he stood at a little distance,
watching her pull off her gloves with a queer comic twitch of his
elastic mouth. "Well, I guess it's only when you want to be," he said,
grasping a lyre-backed chair by its gilt cords, and sitting down astride
of it, his light grey trousers stretching too tightly over his plump
thighs. Undine was perfectly aware that he was a vulgar over-dressed
man, with a red crease of fat above his collar and an impudent
swaggering eye; yet she liked to see him there, and was conscious that
he stirred the fibres of a self she had forgotten but had not ceased to
understand.
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