Chapter 55

At one o’clock he heard a taxi pull up at the end of the Crescent. He heard the bang of a door and the tapping of her shoes. He went to meet her. He saw her as a slim, sleek, sinuous streak of blackness below the whiteness of her floating face. Her very movements were exotic, jaunty, feverish. Country wenches did not move like that. “O—Boy——!” “I had to wait—I——” He felt both the silk of her cloak and the satin of her face. 6 At the top of the stairs Mrs. Gasson appeared in her nightdress, large and white and prope…