Under a particularly menacing look from Sally, he rose, kissed his hand to her, turned a charming smile on David, and drifted out of the door, which he left open behind him.
David didn’t wait for his footsteps to die away. He gave the door a push with his shoulder, and derived some satisfaction from the fact that Wilfrid must have heard the resulting slam.
Sally raised her eyebrows.
“It is my room,” she said.
“And my studio isn’t mine-is that it? Is there anything in what he was talking about, or was it just blethers?”
Sally Foster had a very charming dimple. It showed now as the corner of her mouth lifted.
“It was just blethers. He doesn’t like his place, and he would like to come here. I should never get any work done if he did.”
David scowled.
“Why do you let him bother you?”
“Oh, well, there isn’t very much I can do about it-he just gets into a chair and sticks.”
“You could tell him to go.”
“David, darling, if you think that makes any difference you just don’t know our Wilfrid.”
There was an angry jerk in his voice as he said,
“Don’t call me darling!”
“But it doesn’t mean anything.”
He gave her a look of concentrated dislike and said,
“That’s why.”
Sally said, “Oh-” on which he continued in the same forbidding strain.
“I suppose you call him darling-too!” The last word was ejected with considerable force.
Sally said, “Sometimes.”
“And what have you left to say to the man you love, if all this frittering stuff has left you any feelings worth the name? Tell me that! And I will tell you that when I call a woman darling it will be because I’m thinking of her for my wife, and because she’s everything in the world to me and a bit over!”
Sally said, “Oh-” again. Afterwards she thought of quite a lot of things she might have said, but at the time nothing came out but that “Oh-” Because something hurt her at her heart and there was a pricking behind her eyes. It didn’t get quite as far as anything you could call a tear, but it did impart a softness and a brightness which were quite extraordinarily becoming.