I’d love to make you a cup of tea.’
He rattled on so vivaciously that Julia was amused.
You would never have thought to listen to him that there had ever been anything between them.
He seemed perfectly unembarrassed.
‘All right.
But I can only stay a minute.’
‘O.K.’
They turned into the mews and she preceded him up the narrow staircase.
‘You toddle along to the sitting-room and I’ll put the water on to boil.’
She went in and sat down.
She looked round the room that had been the scene of so many emotions for her.
Nothing was changed.
Her photograph stood in its old place, but on the chimney piece was a large photograph also of Avice Crichton.
On it was written for Tom from Avice.
Julia took everything in.
The room might have been a set in which she had once acted; it was vaguely familiar, but no longer meant anything to her.
The love that had consumed her then, the jealousy she had stifled, the ecstasy of surrender, it had no more reality than one of the innumerable parts she had played in the past.
She relished her indifference.
Tom came in, with the tea-cloth she had given him, and neatly set out the tea-service which she had also given him.
She did not know why the thought of his casually using still all her little presents made her inclined to laugh.
Then he came in with the tea and they drank it sitting side by side on the sofa.
He told her more about his improved circumstances.
In his pleasant, friendly way he acknowledged that it was owing to the work that through her he had been able to bring the firm that he had secured a larger share in the profits.
He told her of the holiday from which he had just returned.
It was quite clear to Julia that he had no inkling how much he had made her suffer.
That too made her now inclined to laugh.
‘I hear you’re going to have an enormous success tonight.’
‘It would be nice, wouldn’t it?’
‘Avice says that both you and Michael have been awfully good to her.
Take care she doesn’t romp away with the play.’
He said it chaffingly, but Julia wondered whether Avice had told him that this was what she expected to do.
‘Are you engaged to her?’
‘No.
She wants her freedom.
She says an engagement would interfere with her career.’
‘With her what?’
The words slipped out of Julia’s mouth before she could stop them, but she immediately recovered herself. ‘Yes, I see what she means of course.’
‘Naturally, I don’t want to stand in her way.
I mean, supposing after tonight she got a big offer for America I can quite see that she ought to be perfectly free to accept.’
Her career!
Julia smiled quietly to herself.
‘You know, I do think you’re a brick, the way you’ve behaved to her.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh well, you know what women are!’
As he said this he slipped his arm round her waist and kissed her.
She laughed outright.
‘What an absurd little thing you are.’
‘How about a bit of love?’
‘Don’t be so silly.’
‘What is there silly about it?