Page 364 - of-human-bondage-

Warren, and having made a competence she now lived the
quiet life of the bourgeoise. She told Philip lewd stories.
‘You must go to Seville,’ she said—she spoke a little bro-
ken English. ‘The most beautiful women in the world.’
She leered and nodded her head. Her triple chin, her large
belly, shook with inward laughter.
It grew so hot that it was almost impossible to sleep at
night. The heat seemed to linger under the trees as though it
were a material thing. They did not wish to leave the starlit
night, and the three of them would sit on the terrace of Ruth
Chalice’s room, silent, hour after hour, too tired to talk any
more, but in voluptuous enjoyment of the stillness. They lis-
tened to the murmur of the river. The church clock struck
one and two and sometimes three before they could drag
themselves to bed. Suddenly Philip became aware that Ruth
Chalice and Lawson were lovers. He divined it in the way
the girl looked at the young painter, and in his air of posses-
sion; and as Philip sat with them he felt a kind of effluence
surrounding them, as though the air were heavy with some-
thing strange. The revelation was a shock. He had looked
upon Miss Chalice as a very good fellow and he liked to talk
to her, but it had never seemed to him possible to enter into
a closer relationship. One Sunday they had all gone with a
tea-basket into the forest, and when they came to a glade
which was suitably sylvan, Miss Chalice, because it was idyl-
lic, insisted on taking off her shoes and stockings. It would
have been very charming only her feet were rather large and
she had on both a large corn on the third toe. Philip felt it
made her proceeding a little ridiculous. But now he looked