The servants were in bed.
Julia suggested that they should go down to the basement and forage.
‘I don’t want anything to eat unless you do,’ he said.
‘I’ll just have a whisky and soda and go to bed.
I’ve got a very heavy day tomorrow at the office.’
‘All right. Bring it up to the drawing-room.
I’ll go and turn on the lights.’
When he came up she was doing her face in front of a mirror and she continued till he had poured out the whisky and sat down.
Then she turned round.
He looked very young, and incredibly charming, in his beautiful clothes, sitting there in the big armchair, and all the bitterness she had felt that evening, all the devouring jealousy of the last few days, were dissipated on a sudden by the intensity of her passion.
She sat down on the arm of his chair and caressingly passed her hand over his hair.
He drew back with an angry gesture.
‘Don’t do that,’ he said.
‘I do hate having my hair mussed about.’
It was like a knife in her heart.
He had never spoken to her in that tone before.
But she laughed lightly and getting up took the whisky he had poured out for her and sat down in a chair opposite him.
The movement he had made, the words he had spoken, were instinctive and he was a trifle abashed.
He avoided her glance and his face once more bore a sulky look.
The moment was decisive.
For a while they were silent.
Julia’s heart beat painfully, but at last she forced herself to speak.
‘Tell me,’ she said, smiling, ‘have you been to bed with Avice Crichton?’
‘Of course not,’ he cried.
‘Why not?
She’s pretty.’
‘She’s not that sort of girl.
I respect her.’
Julia let none of her feelings appear on her face.
Her manner was wonderfully casual; she might have been talking of the fall of empires or the death of kings.
‘D’you know what I should have said?
I should have said you were madly in love with her.’
He still avoided her eyes.
‘Are you engaged to her by any chance?’
‘No.’
He looked at her now, but the eyes that met Julia’s were hostile.
‘Have you asked her to marry you?’
‘How could I?
A damned rotter like me.’
He spoke so passionately that Julia was astonished.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh what’s the good of beating about the bush?
How could I ask a decent girl to marry me?
I’m nothing but a kept boy and, God knows, you have good reason to know it.’
‘Don’t be so silly.
What a fuss to make over a few little presents I’ve given you.’
‘I oughtn’t to have taken them.
I knew all the time it was wrong.
It all came so gradually that I didn’t realize what was happening till I was in it up to my neck.
I couldn’t afford to lead the life you made me lead; I was absolutely up against it.