Part 2 — X

"ARE you going back to the West End?"

"I am going further. I am staying with my uncle Solon in Bayswater," said Irene.

"Let me drive you back."

"I'd much better drive you back to your hotel; I've got a car."

"Well, as a matter of fact, I want to talk to you," said Lewis, bluntly.

"Very well, then."

They went out together and crossed the road through the lunch-time traffic, through the crush of lorries and buses wedged together like pack ice and loaded to bursting point, in the canyon-like streets, between the streams of people emitted from the offices to be swallowed up underground or to lunch standing up in bars and in A.B.C. tea shops.

They got out at Knightsbridge Barracks. The last of the morning riders were coming in, and already the afternoon hacks, loose-jointed, with lack-lustre coats and harness, smelling of the livery stable, were taking possession of the Row. They went obliquely across the grass dotted with big trees, whose branches were as regular as those of genealogical trees; English girls wearing imitation amber necklaces were going home, with novels bound in green cloth under moist armpits, accompanied by long limp youths who walked with bent knees, carrying their hats in their hands.

"Just now in that office you frightened me even more than you did in Sicily," said Lewis.

"And now?"

"Not so much now. When you are doing nothing you are much more like other women. I've often thought of you.... Are you romantic?"

"No, romance was invented by people who have no hearts. Personally, my thoughts have been of San Lucido."

"And now you have got your reward. You are a good business woman; you know how to persevere."

"And you are a good business man because you know when you are beaten."

"Shall I tell you why I let you beat me? I did it to see you again," said Lewis, softly.

"Don't be silly. You gave in because you couldn't do anything else. You were heading for financial quicksands when the time came to pay. You've got a cool head so you cut off a finger to save your hand, as they say at the Bourse."

"Financial quicksands for the Franco-African?" asked Lewis. "For a little matter of six million lire?"

"It's nothing to do with the Franco-African," retorted Irene, calmly. "It's you. You've been acting all through this business entirely on your own account without consulting your Board. Do you think I don't know that? You acted from pride, as I should possibly have done myself. In proportion as your difficulties increased—and I don't deny that I helped—your personal resources, or those of your friends, diminished. A time comes when the fight of one against many becomes impossible, don't you see? I knew you could appeal to your backers. But I also guessed that you would rather give up the mine than lay the situation before them when it was going badly. Wasn't I right?"

Lewis kept his eyes fixed on the ground. "Yes," he replied, furiously, "of course you are right."

There was a short pause.

"It's no good trying to do anything with you," he went on. "Why aren't you a woman?"

The blood rushed to Irene's face and flooded it with a soft pink. Her eyes grew misty and her mouth trembled.

Lewis saw that he had hurt her. He grew calm at once.

"Is there pain in your heart or only in your eyes?... Please forgive me. I only meant: why do you always think before you speak, why do you never smile, why don't your pupils dilate with interest when you are being discussed? Why do you think of what other people are doing?"

Irene could not get past his previous statement.

"It isn't that. Don't make fun of me. What did you mean when you asked me why I was not a woman? Is it because I am well-balanced? It is a perfectly natural balance."

"I am naturally well-balanced, too," replied Lewis. "I can walk about in the dark with a glass of water without spilling a drop."

She interrupted him.

"Don't treat it as a joke."

"Surely when one has being doing serious business one can laugh afterwards? Would you rather I sulked over my defeat?"

"You always fall on your feet like a cat.... I don't like dreamers."

"Personally, I hate sensible people. I am suspicious of fanatics and I believe in mercy."

"I admire perfection.... We could go on like this all day. It is just two o'clock, and when people are late for meals uncle Solon gets sullen."

"Before leaving you," said Lewis, "one last question: there is nothing subtle between us, is there?"

Irene shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh! dear, no."

"That's just what I thought," answered Lewis.

* * * * *

She left him without having lost any of her assurance or self-possession. He had an impression of a brown clean-cut face, narrow hips, stockings drawn tight over transparent ankles, a jumper which her bosom hardly stretched, and a scarf knotted round her neck and floating in the wind behind her.

But the deed giving up possession of the mines lay in the safe in the city, duly signed, sealed and delivered.

Lewis watched her through Lancaster Gate. She went into a large house, cream coloured like the others, with a built-out bay window through which he could see little mahogany tables covered with silver boxes and signed photographs. Lewis was not hungry. He wandered towards the Dutch garden which winter had hardly touched and which, thanks to the box hedges, kept its solemn lines, in keeping with the red and black brick architecture of the Palace which shelters the aged servants of the Crown. In the midst of the paved rectangle in this flowered cloister with its wistaria pergola, freed from the source of his torment, Lewis sat alone with a blackbird.

Everything encouraged him to live. The sun was tracing his majestic course; it was like Sicily. And he had got rid of a worrying piece of business.

Suddenly a cloud passed over the sun. The feeling of well-being left him. All at once Lewis felt he was seeing things as they really were. His destiny seemed to unfold itself before him.

"How cold it is now that she is gone," he thought, "how bored I am!"

Irene had revealed a great truth to him. He knew that the next time he saw her he would ask her to marry him.