, having herself provoked the occasion, she might do a little
more to meet it. It was by no means, however, that his presence in any
degree ceased to prevail; for there were minutes during which her face,
the only thing in her that moved, turning with his turns and following
his glances, actually had a look inconsistent with anything but
submission to almost any accident. It might have expressed a desire for
his talk to last and last, an acceptance of any treatment of the hour
or any version, or want of version, of her act that would best suit his
ease, even in fact a resigned prevision of the occurrence of something
that would leave her, quenched and blank, with the appearance of having
made him come simply that she might look at him. She might indeed well
have been aware of an inability to look at him little enough to make
it flagrant that she had appealed to him for something quite different.
Keeping the situation meanwhile thus in his hands he recognised over the
chimney a new alteration. "There used to be a big print--wasn't there?
a thing of the fifties--we had lots of them at home; some place or other
'in the olden time.' And now there's that lovely French glass. So you
see." He spoke as if she had in some way gainsaid him, whereas he had
not left her time even to answer a question. But he broke out anew on
the beauty of her flowers. "You have awfully good ones--where do you get
them? Flowers and pictures and--what are the other things people have
when they're happy and superior?--books and birds. You ought to have a
bird or two, though I dare say you think that by the noise I make I'm
as good myself as a dozen. Isn't there some girl in some story--it isn't
Scott; what is it?--who had domestic difficulties and a cage in her
window and whom one associates with chickweed and virtue? It isn't
Esmeralda--Esmeralda had a poodle, hadn't she?--or have I got my
heroines mixed? You're up here yourself like a heroine; you're perched
in your tower or what do you call it?--your bower. You quite hang over
the place, you know--the great wicked city, the wonderful London sky and
the monuments looming through: or am I again only muddling up my Zola?
You must have the sunsets--haven't you? No--what am I talking about? Of
course you look north. Well, they strike me as about the only thing you
haven't. At the same time it's not only because I envy you that I feel
humiliated. I ought to have sent you some flowers." He smote himself
wi