64
You and Oswald are going over to Martin’s for lunch. He and I are quarrelling about a key-ring. There will be no luncheon here to-day.”
She went away, and I stood bewildered. This delightful room had seemed to me a place where light-heartedness and charming manners lived—housed there just as the purple curtains and the Kiva rugs and the gay water-colours were. And now everything was in ruins. The air was still and cold like the air in a refrigerating-room. What I felt was fear; I was afraid to look or speak or move. Everything about me seemed evil. When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless.
“It’s all right, Nellie.” Oswald recovered himself and put a hand on my shoulder. “Myra isn’t half so furious with me as she pretends. I’ll get
