It wraps the two closer and closer, a spider spinning a soft web out
of petals, folding the two with swathes and swathes of its heavy, fragrant
silk.
"Oh--mine--isn't anything," says Ted rather unsteadily, after the moment.
"Only looking at firelight and wanting to take the coals in my hands."
Rose's voice is firmer than his but her mouth is still moved with content
at the thing it has desired being brought nearer.
"I really can't prescribe on as little evidence as that," she says with
music come back to her voice in the strength of a running wave. "I can
only repeat what you told me. That there was something you needed--and
wanted"--she is mocking now--"and didn't have at present. And that you
would probably--what was it?--oh yes--have it, in the end."
The wispy little woman has crept up to Ted's elbow with an illegible bill.
Rose has spoken slowly to give her time to get there--it is always so much
better to choose your own most effective background for really affecting
scenes.
"And now I really must be getting back," she cuts in briskly, her fingers
playing with a hat that certainly needs no rearrangement, when Ted, after
absent-mindedly paying the bill, is starting to speak in the voice of one
still sleep-walking.
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