Chapter 79

“Don’t let us go out,” he said, though there were times when he liked sitting at the café in her company. “I like talking to you.” It was true. He wondered now how he could ever have endured the conversation of Mrs. Levison or the Duchess of D. Phil was rough and frank, when she was neither frivolous nor sensuous; she had brought herself up in a hard school, reinforcing her native candour. Beside her, he felt that his own experience had been banked with cushions. She had estimated him shrewdly when she compared him…