"Can't understand you," she said at last.
"Why not?"
"What did you let me go on talking for?"
"It was rather amusing to compare your taste with mine."
"Amusing? God!"
She lifted herself to her feet and went across to the mantelpiece,
leaning her elbows on it, her head in her hands. All her exhaustion
had returned. She felt a thousand times more tired in that moment
than when she had rested on the landing. All that afternoon she had
been walking the streets--all that evening too. From Regent Street
to Oxford Street, from Oxford Street to Bond Street, from Bond Street
through the Burlington Arcade into Piccadilly, then over the whole
course again, smiling cheerfully at this man, looking knowingly at
that--all a forced effort, all a spurious energy; and pain throbbed
in her limbs--a dominant note of pain. She could feel a pulse in her
brain that kept time to it. These are the ecstatic pleasures of
vice--the charms, the allurements of the gay life.
At last she turned round and faced him. "I don't want any of those
damned red carpets and things," she said,--"if you'll let me come
and live with you--look after you."
She crossed the room and laid her hands heavily on his shoulders;
bent towards him to kiss his lips.
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