She came in with her latch-key, put down her sunshade, and stood looking
at herself in the glass. Her cheeks were flushed as if the sun had
burned them; her lips were parted in a smile. She stretched her arms out
as though to embrace herself, with a laugh that for all the world was
like a sob.
Soames stepped forward.
"Very-pretty!" he said.
But as though shot she spun round, and would have passed him up the
stairs. He barred the way.
"Why such a hurry?" he said, and his eyes fastened on a curl of hair
fallen loose across her ear....
He hardly recognised her. She seemed on fire, so deep and rich the
colour of her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, and of the unusual blouse she
wore.
She put up her hand and smoothed back the curl. She was breathing fast
and deep, as though she had been running, and with every breath perfume
seemed to come from her hair, and from her body, like perfume from an
opening flower.
"I don't like that blouse," he said slowly, "it's a soft, shapeless
thing!"
He lifted his finger towards her breast, but she dashed his hand aside.
"Don't touch me!" she cried.
He caught her wrist; she wrenched it away.
"And where may you have been?" he asked.
"In heaven--out of this house!" With those words she fled upstairs.
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