The Heat of the Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

as it happened, as things panned out; but I took it that, as we had said eight, before that might not be convenient to you." "It has not been convenient that you should come at all." Harrison, looking about him for somewhere to drop his match, said: "Ha-ha--you know, you're the frankest person I know!--_Should__ I have found you, say, at around seven?" "Yes. And I should have been glad to get this over." He looked straight at her; this time just failing to utter that maddening little self-contained concise laugh. "Well..." he began, then stopped--one might have thought, helplessly. She went on: "What else can you suppose? After what I said to you last time--detestable things I should not have been forced to say--only you could have insisted on coming back!" He said: "You talk as if there were rules. All I know is, there's something like nothing else between you and me, even if you don't know it. I'm seldom wrong--and anyhow," he wound up, "you told me this was O. K. You said eight o'clock." It was her turn to say: "Well..." Tightening her spread-out fingers above her elbows, she looked away from him at the windows across the street. Oblongs of mauve-brown dusk were by this time framed in the white curtains. To point out that he had forced this meeting by an implied threat would be to admit that in her life _any__ threat could have force or context at all. She said: "You had something to tell me?" "I said I wanted a talk.--Look, is that an ashtray there?" One hand held cautiously cupwise under his cigarette, he advanced, gained the hearthrug, knocked off the head of ash into a tray on the chimneypiece near her shoulder. "Pretty," he said softly. "All your things are so pretty." "What is?" she said sharply. "Even this ashtray." He was touching around the rim of it with the tip of a finger; it was an ordinary little enamel-flowered one, from any Chinese shop. "It's not mine," she flickered. "Nothing in this flat is." There were, naturally, any number of other ashtrays about the room: she put the stratagem in its place by ignoring it. He had brought himself face to face with the mirror and photographs; she went on looking out of the window--only, her stillness and heedlessness became more rigid and artificial. He did something quite unexpected--turned and switched on a lamp. "You don't mind?" Mind? On the contrary, this released her; this could make it imperative to black out the windows. Moving from one to the other, tugging cords, settling folds into place, she tried not to show how welcome the release was. She switched on another lamp, then looked round: he was fixedly staring at the photographs. "Splendid," he said. "I wanted to see these better." "You've seen them before." "They did always interest me. One of them's very like." "Roderick's?" "Can't say: never met the original.--No, I meant the other." Stella, turning to the desk, pulled a drawer open, took one of her own cigarettes: she remained with her back to him, slow over the business of lighting it--long enough to at last be able to say with enough indifference: "Oh, you know him?" "I know _of__ him--know him by sight. I don't say we ever have what you might call _met__--he might not know me. An attractive chap--at least, so I always think." "Do you?" She sat down on the stool by the escritoire, propping her elbow among the letters on the pulled-out flap. Glancing at the letters obliquely, idly, she went on, as idly: "Oh, you've seen him around?" "That's about it. On his own sometimes, sometimes around with you. To be frank, I'd seen you with him before you and I met." "Had you," she uninvitingly said. "Yes. So the first time you let me drop in to this delightful flat, I was not altogether surprised when I spotted this. I was on the point of saying, 'By Jove, yes; we both know him!' " "So why didn't you?" "You see, one never knows--you might have thought me a bit pushing. Also it's a habit of mine to keep my thoughts to myself." "I see. But did that amount to a thought?