"Oh! but you are, though," she cried. "You're just a wee bit jealous.
You are--you know you are, and I'm not a scrap sorry. On the contrary,
I'm enchanted. For it shows that you are human after all, and must have
a name and address tucked away somewhere about you. I don't want to
know what they are, but it's comfortable to be assured of their
existence. It shows you don't drop straight down from heaven--as I was
beginning to be afraid you did--once a week, into the Mortlake Road,
and then go straight up again. It shows that I could get on to you by
post, or telephone, or other means of communication common to mortals,
if I was in a tight place and really wanted you, without walking as far
as Hammersmith Bridge and waiting in the wind and the wet on the bare
chance you might take it into your august head to materialise, and
break out of paradise, and take a little stroll round our sublunary
sphere."
For a moment Poppy laid her hand lightly on Mr. Iglesias' shoulder.
"Yes, be cross," she repeated. "Just as cross as ever you like, so long
as you don't keep it up too protractedly. It's the most engaging piece
of flattery I've come across for a month of Sundays. Only you needn't
worry in this particular instance, dear man, I give you my word you
needn't. It's a sheer waste of feeling. For Fallowfeild's always been
perfectly decent with me. I know people think him an awfully risky lot,
but they're noodles. He's racketed in his day--of course he has. But if
he'd been more of a hypocrite, people would have talked less. As the
man says in the play, it's not the sin but the being found out which
makes the scandal. And Fallowfeild was too honest. He never pretended
to be better than he was. He is a man of good nature who has done wrong
things, which is quite different to being a man of bad nature who does
wrong things, and still more different to being a man of weak nature
who pretends to do right things. That last is the sort I hate most, and
I speak out of beastly intimate experience."
She made a most expressive grimace, as though she had a remarkably
disagreeable taste in her mouth.
"No salvation for that sort, I believe," she went on, "either here or
hereafter. Now, are you better? You do believe it has always been
perfectly square and above-board between Fallowfeild and me, don't you?"
"Unquestionably, I believe it," Dominic answered. He spoke slowly.
Poppy turned her head sharply and looked hard at him.
"Ah! but I don't quite like that," she said. "I've muddled it
somehow--I see I have. I've hurt and offended you. You're farther off
than you were ten minutes ago. In spirit you've got up and gone away. I
have muddled it. I have made you distrust me."
"No," Dominic answered, "you have not made me distrust you; but you
have perplexed me. It is the result of my own dulness, no doubt. My
imagination is not agile enough to follow you, and so--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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