He went up to her to kiss her good night. She hesitated for the fraction of a second, then with a friendly smile gave him first one cheek and then the other.
"You'll find your way out, won't you?" She put her hand to her mouth to hide an elaborate yawn. "Oh, I'm so sleepy."
The moment he had gone she turned out the lights and went to the window. She peered cautiously through the curtains. She heard him slam the front door and saw him come out. He looked right and left. She guessed at once that he was looking for a taxi. There was none in sight and he started to walk in the direction of the Park. She knew that he was going to join Avice Crichton at the supper party and tell her the glad news. Julia sank into a chair. She had acted, she had acted marvellously, and now she felt all in. Tears, tears that nobody could see, rolled down her cheeks. She was miserably unhappy. There was only one thing that enabled her to bear her wretchedness, and that was the icy contempt that she could not but feel for the silly boy who could prefer to her a small-part actress who didn't even begin to know how to act. It was grotesque. She couldn't use her hands; why she didn't even know how to walk across the stage.
"If I had any sense of humour I'd just laugh my head off," she cried, "It's the most priceless joke I've ever heard."
She wondered what Tom would do now. The rent of the flat would be falling due on quarter-day. A lot of the things in it belonged to her. He wouldn't much like going back to his bed-sitting room in Tavistock Square. She thought of the friends he had made through her. He'd been clever with them. They found him useful and he'd keep them. But it wouldn't be so easy for him to take Avice about. She was a hard, mercenary little thing, Julia was sure of that, she wouldn't be much inclined to bother about him when his money flowed less freely. The fool to be taken in by her pretence of virtue! Julia knew the type. It was quite obvious, she was only using Tom to get a part at the Siddons and the moment she got it she would give him the air. Julia started when this notion crossed her mind. She had promised Tom that Avice should have the part in Nowadays because it fell into the scene she was playing, but she had attached no importance to her promise. Michael was always there to put his foot down.
"By God, she shall have the part," she said out loud. She chuckled maliciously. "Heaven knows, I'm a good-natured woman, but there are limits to everything."
It would be a satisfaction to turn the tables on Tom and Avice Crichton. She sat on, in the darkness, grimly thinking how she would do it. But every now and then she started to cry again, for from the depths of her subconscious surged up recollections that were horribly painful. Recollections of Tom's slim, youthful body against hers, his warm nakedness and the peculiar feel of his lips, his smile, at once shy and roguish, and the smell of his curly hair.
"If I hadn't been a fool I'd have said nothing. I ought to know him by now. It's only an infatuation. He'd have got over it and then he'd have come hungrily back to me."
Now she was nearly dead with fatigue. She got up and went to bed. She took a sleeping-draught.
22
BUT she woke early next morning, at six, and began to think of Tom. She repeated to herself all she had said to him and all he had said to her. She was harassed and unhappy. Her only consolation was that she had carried the rupture through with so careless a gaiety that he could not guess how miserable he had made her.
She spent a wretched day, unable to think of anything else, and angry with herself because she could not put Tom out of her mind. It would not have been so bad if she could have confided her grief to a friend. She wanted someone to console her, someone to tell her that Tom was not worth troubling about and to assure her that he had treated her shamefully. As a rule she took her troubles to Charles or to Dolly. Of