He sat down, then made a number of commonplace remarks, to which she did not reply. Rendell, too, was only dimly aware of their purport, for his essential attention was occupied wholly with her appearance.
Till now, he had seen her only in outdoor clothes, and the absence of hat, fur coat, and gloves seemed to intensify the disturbing element in her beauty. Also, for the first time, Rendell became aware of her figure. It was lithe, perfectly proportioned, and sensitive to a degree so removed from his experience that only an extravagant comparison seemed appropriate. It suggested an instrument fashioned to transmit an unknown music. Her black clothes emphasised the pallor and frailty of her features. But, in repose, no less than in animation, an aura of intensity invested her. The unexpected seemed imminent in her presence.
Rendell’s commonplace chatter flickered out, and he felt—and looked—embarrassed.
“There ought to be more people like you,” she said slowly in her rich deep voice.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“It was imaginative of you to talk about the weather—to say the hotel was quiet—that it was clever of me to find it. It was your way of telling me that, if I wished, this meeting could be formal—unlike those at Potiphar Street.”
“Well, perhaps,” he stammered, “I really don’t know.”
“Although you must know perfectly well,” she went on, as if he had not spoken, “that I asked you to come here because I wanted to tell you everything. Didn’t you know that?” she added, after a pause, as Rendell said nothing.
“Well, I suppose it did occur to me.”
“I have to tell you everything—or not see you again. I either trust people entirely, or not at all.”
A long silence ensued. To be alone with her in this intimacy lulled Rendell in an odd interior kind of way. He felt he had entered her world, and that each moment yielded one of its secrets.
She sat cross-legged, her hands clasped round her right knee, her head thrown back. When she spoke it was as if she were continuing a reverie aloud.
She told him of her childhood in an old house surrounded by a great rambling garden, circled by trees, twenty miles from London. She was an only child, and her parents had spoiled her. From the age of twelve she had been educated by governesses, as her parents did not approve of the schools in the vicinity—and refused even to contemplate sending her away.
Swiftly, vividly, she evoked the spirit of the old house with its tree-ringed garden. The world of her childhood emerged—not as a memory, but as something still existent. She seemed to walk back to it, becoming, on the way, the child who had inhabited it. Then, with a few sentences, her parents came to life. Rendell saw the invalid father, who went for a drive each morning at eleven, each afternoon at three, when the weather was fine, and who spent the rest of his time reading Gibbon, or studying the financial columns of the newspapers. A kind, rich, too-indulgent man, who clung to a rigidly-defined code, not permitting a thought to stray beyond its orthodox limits. Rosalie revealed him as he had appeared to her when she was fourteen: a bent, wizened man, in an old smoking-jacket, puffing his pipe, and shuffling round his large untidy study—cursing the Germans and the air-raids, and endlessly proclaiming the Decline and Fall of the British Empire.
Then, with a sentence or two, Rosalie conjured up her mother, A frailly-built, beautiful woman, whose Trinity consisted of her husband, her daughter, and her home. She moved about the house like the spirit of tranquillity, dowering each room with a dreamy radiance.
“I was fifteen when the war ended, and during the next few years I discovered—most unfortunately—that I was a talented person.”
“Why unfortunately?”
She gazed at him with blue, frightened eyes for some moments—then laughed.
“I had a gift for drawing, and a gift for acting. I was told that I ought to have my voice trained, and that I ought to study dancing. I was excited, several careers seemed to be beckoning me. Money was poured out in an endless stream for lessons. Every morning the car took me to London. For a year I studied drawing. Then I gave that up and spent a year at a dramatic academy. They said I was most promising. But I gave that up, too. Then for some time I went from one voice-producer to another. But, eventually, I decided I was destined to be a dancer. That lasted some time. And then, suddenly, I gave
“But why didn’t you stick to anything?”
She looked at him enigmatically.
“Because I discovered that each meant work—and I hadn’t the will. Work—endless work—month after month, year after year! And the greater one’s gift, the greater the necessity for work. I was done for, directly I had reached the limit of what I could do naturally. I was a dilettante, a gifted amateur. And I was surrounded by students who