The smaller part was
cut horizontally into two storeys. The lower storey comprised a very
small hall, a fair bathroom, the tiniest staircase in London, and
G.J.'s very small bedroom. The upper storey comprised a very small
dining-room, the kitchen, and servants' quarters.
The door between the bedroom and the drawing room, left open in the
night for ventilation, had been softly closed as usual during G.J.'s
final sleep, and the bedroom was in absolute darkness save for a faint
grey gleam over the valance of the window curtains. G.J. could think.
He wondered whether he was in love. He hoped he was in love, and the
fact that the woman who attracted him was a courtesan did not disturb
him in the least.
He was nearing fifty years of age. He had casually known hundreds of
courtesans in sundry capitals, a few of them very agreeable; also a
number of women calling themselves, sometimes correctly, actresses,
all of whom, for various reasons which need not be given, had proved
very unsatisfactory. But he had never loved--unless it might be,
mildly, Concepcion, and Concepcion was now a war bride. He wanted to
love. He had never felt about any woman, not even about Concepcion, as
he felt about the woman seen for a few minutes at the Marigny Theatre
and then for five successive nights vainly searched for in all the
chief music-halls of Paris.
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