'All right,' said he.
Then she went downstairs.
He lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till Vera's
voice said coldly, beneath his window outside: 'You should clear away, then. We don't want the breakfast things on the
table for a week.' Siegmund's heart set hard. He rose, with a shut mouth, and went across
to the bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood at
the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly.
Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little
pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms were
bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette,
which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund felt slightly amused to see her
stout little calves planted so firmly close together. She carefully
sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, soaping her hair,
but not her ears. Then, very deliberately, she squeezed out the sponge
and proceeded to wipe away the soap.
For some reason or other she glanced round. Her startled eyes met his.
She, too, had beautiful dark blue eyes. She stood, with the sponge at
her neck, looking full at him. Siegmund felt himself shrinking. The
child's look was steady, calm, inscrutable.
'Hello!' said her father. 'Are you here!' The child, without altering her expression in the slightest, turned her
back on him, and continued wiping her neck. She dropped the sponge in
the water and took the towel from off the side of the bath. Then she
turned to look again at Siegmund, who stood in his pyjamas before her,
his mouth shut hard, but his eyes shrinking and tender. She seemed to be
trying to discover something in him.
'Have you washed your ears?' he said gaily.
She paid no heed to this, except that he noticed her face now wore a
slight constrained smile as she looked at him. She was shy. Still she
continued to regard him curiously.
'There is some chocolate on my dressing-table,' he said.
'Where have you been to?' she asked suddenly.
'To the seaside,' he answered, smiling.
'To Brighton?' she asked. Her tone was still condemning.
'Much farther than that,' he replied.
'To Worthing?' she asked.
'Farther--in a steamer,' he replied.
'But who did you go with?' asked the child.
'Why, I went all by myself,' he answered.
'Twuly?' she asked.
'Weally and twuly,' he answered, laughing.
'Couldn't you take me?' she asked.
'I will next time,' he replied.
The child still looked at him, unsatisfied.