Edith Wharton

The Reef Edith Wharton

"Don't you remember me now-at Mrs. Murrett's?" She threw the question at Darrow across atable of the quiet coffee-room to which, after a vainly prolonged quest for her trunk, he hadsuggested taking her for a cup of tea. In this musty retreat she had removed her dripping hat, hung it on the fender to dry, andstretched herself on tiptoe in front of the round eagle-crowned mirror, above the mantel vases ofdyed immortelles, while she ran her fingers comb-wise through her hair. The gesture had acted onDarrow's numb feelings as the glow of the fire acted on his circulation; and when he had asked: "Aren't your feet wet, too?" and, after frank inspection of a stout-shod sole, she had answeredcheerfully: "No-luckily I had on my new boots," he began to feel that human intercourse wouldstill be tolerable if it were always as free from formality. The removal of his companion's hat, besides provoking this reflection, gave him his first full sightof her face; and this was so favourable that the name she now pronounced fell on him with a quitedisproportionate shock of dismay."Oh, Mrs. Murrett's-was it there?"He remembered her now, of course: remembered her as one of the shadowy sidling presences inthe background of that awful house in Chelsea, one of the dumb appendages of the shriekingunescapable Mrs. Murrett, into whose talons he had fallen in the course of his head-long pursuit ofLady Ulrica Crispin. Oh, the taste of stale follies! How insipid it was, yet how it clung..