Page:Encounters (Bowen).djvu/176

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO—


write like that! Fancy living at 28, Abiram Road, West Kensington. I wonder if he's got a wife, I do wonder." Delicious warmth crept down her. "Poetry! I thought he wrote poetry. Fancy him having guessed I read it!"

"I am going to send you my poetry. It is not published yet, but I am having it typewritten. When it is published there shall be just your one initial on the dedication page. I cannot bear the thought of your living alone among those strange people who hurt you—familiar, unfamiliar faces and cold eyes. I know it all; the numb mornings, the feverish afternoons; the intolerable lamplit evenings, night———"

"Now," she thought, "I'm sure he has a wife."

"—and your wan, dazed face turning without hope to the first gleams at the window———"

Ah, guilty, guilty, that she slept so well!

The cook came in.

When the meals for the day were ordered and her breakfast half-surreptitiously eaten with the letter tucked inside the tea-cosy,

164