The Green Hotel, which Jolyon entered at one o'clock, stood nearly
opposite that more famous hostelry, the Crown and Sceptre; it was
modest, highly respectable, never out of cold beef, gooseberry tart, and
a dowager or two, so that a carriage and pair was almost always standing
before the door.
In a room draped in chintz so slippery as to forbid all emotion, Irene
was sitting on a piano stool covered with crewel work, playing
'Hansel and Gretel' out of an old score. Above her on a wall, not yet
Morris-papered, was a print of the Queen on a pony, amongst deer-hounds,
Scotch caps, and slain stags; beside her in a pot on the window-sill
was a white and rosy fuchsia. The Victorianism of the room almost
talked; and in her clinging frock Irene seemed to Jolyon like Venus
emerging from the shell of the past century.
"If the proprietor had eyes," he said, "he would show you the door; you
have broken through his decorations." Thus lightly he smothered up an
emotional moment. Having eaten cold beef, pickled walnut, gooseberry
tart, and drunk stone-bottle ginger-beer, they walked into the Park, and
light talk was succeeded by the silence Jolyon had dreaded.
"You haven't told me about Paris," he said at last.
"No. I've been shadowed for a long time; one gets used to that. But then
Soames came. By the little Niobe--the same story; would I go back to
him?"
"Incredible!"
She had spoken without raising her eyes, but she looked up now. Those
dark eyes clinging to his said as no words could have: 'I have come to
an end; if you want me, here I am.'
For sheer emotional intensity had he ever--old as he was--passed through
such a moment?
The words: 'Irene, I adore you!' almost escaped him. Then, with a
clearness of which he would not have believed mental vision capable, he
saw Jolly lying with a white face turned to a white wall.
"My boy is very ill out there," he said quietly.
Irene slipped her arm through his.
"Let's walk on; I understand."
No miserable explanation to attempt! She had understood! And they walked
on among the bracken, knee-high already, between the rabbit-holes and
the oak-trees, talking of Jolly. He left her two hours later at the
Richmond Hill Gate, and turned towards home.
'She knows of my feeling for her, then,' he thought. Of course! One
could not keep knowledge of that from such a woman!