THE PAPERS
"That's a proof then of what you do see."
Her silence for a moment admitted it, though evidently she was making, for herself, a distinction, which she didn't express. "I don't then see what I want, what I require. And he," she added, "if he does have some reason, will have to have an awfully strong one. To be strong enough it will have to be awful."
"You mean he'll have done something?"
"Yes, that may remain undiscovered if he can only drop out of the papers, sit for a while in darkness. You'll know what it is; you'll not be able to help yourself. But I sha'n't want to, for anything."
She had got up as she said it, and he sat looking at her, thanks to her odd emphasis, with an interest that, as he also rose, passed itself off as a joke. "Ah, then, you sweet sensitive thing, I promise to keep it from you."
II
They met again a few days later, and it seemed the law of their meetings that these should take place mainly within moderate eastward range of Charing Cross. An afternoon performance of a play translated from the Finnish, already several times given, on a series of Saturdays, had held Maud for an hour in a small, hot, dusty theatre where the air hung as heavy about the great "trimmed" and plumed hats of the ladies as over the flora and fauna of a tropical forest; at the end of which she edged out of her stall in the last row, to join a small band of unattached critics and correspondents, spectators with ulterior views and pencilled shirtcuffs, who, coming together in the lobby for an exchange of ideas, were ranging from "Awful rot" to "Rather jolly." Ideas, of this calibre, rumbled and flashed, so that, lost in the discussion, our young woman failed at first to make out that a gentleman on the other side of
327
