"Um. Yes."
"I bet you read an awful lot."
"Very little. Oh--D'Annunzio and some Turgenev and a little Tourgenieff.... That last was a joke, you know."
"Oh yes," disconcertedly.
"What sorts of plays do you go to, Mr. Wrenn?"
"Moving pictures mostly," he said, easily, then bitterly wished he hadn't confessed so low-life a habit.
"Well--tell me, my dear--Oh, I didn't mean that; artists use it a good deal; it just means `old chap.' You don't mind my asking such beastly personal questions, do you? I'm interested in people.... And now I must go up and write a letter. I was going over to Olympia's--she's one of the Interesting People I spoke of--but you see you have been much more amusing. Good night. You're lonely in London, aren't you? We'll have to go sightseeing some day."
"Yes, I am lonely!" he exploded. Then, meekly: "Oh, thank you! I sh'd be awful pleased to.... Have you seen the Tower, Miss Nash?"
"No. Never. Have you?"
"No. You see, I thought it 'd be kind of a gloomy thing to see all alone. Is that why you haven't never been there, too?"
"My dear man, I see I shall have to educate you. Shall I? I've been taken in hand by so many people--it would be a pleasure to pass on the implied slur. Shall I?"
"Please do."
"One simply doesn't go and see the Tower, because that's what trippers do. Don't you understand, my dear? (Pardon the `my dear' again.) The Tower is the sort of thing school superintendents see and then go back and lecture on in school assembly-room and the G. A. R. hall. I'll take you to the Tate Gallery." Then, very abruptly, "G' night," and she was gone.
He stared after her smooth back, thinking: "Gee! I wonder if she got sore at something I said. I don't think I was fresh this time. But she beat it so quick.... Them lips of hers--I never knew there was such red lips. And an artist--paints pictures!... Read a lot--Nitchy--German musical comedy. Wonder if that's that `Merry Widow' thing?... That gray dress of hers makes me think of fog. Cur'ous."
In her room Istra Nash inspected her nose in a mirror, powdered, and sat down to write, on thick creamy paper: Skilly dear, I'm in a fierce Bloomsbury boarding-house--bores --except for a Phe-nomenon--little man of 35 or 40 with embryonic imagination & a virgin soul. I'll try to keep from planting radical thoughts in the virgin soul, but I'm tempted.
Oh Skilly dear I'm lonely as the devil. Would it be too bromid. to say I wish you were here? I put out my hand in the darkness, & yours wasn't there. My dear, my dear, how desolate--Oh you understand it only too well with your supercilious grin & your superior eye-glasses & your beatific Oxonian ignorance of poor eager America.