There was a distinct air of embarrassment between them when they found themselves alone in the hotel bedroom together. It was abominably stuffy, and Ernest went to the window and threw it up.
He looked out for a moment on the confusion of roofs and blinding lights, at the orange- and ruby-coloured signs that flashed on and off, at the sinister-looking black spaces beyond which lay one knew not what, at the white-lettered signs which were painted, tier upon tier, on the side of a building in the next street, at the strange, blurred sky which might as well be a stretch of canvas for all its apparent reality. Up here the sound of the traffic was deadened to a dull rumble that seemed resentful of the spring night.
Ernest found that he had smudged his finger-ends in opening the window. He went into the bathroom to wash his hands. Finch had dropped into a chair by the table, looking very young and wan under the hard electric light. He had picked up the shiny black Bible belonging to the hotel and was looking at it with a queer smile. An uncomfortable boy, Ernest thought. He lathered his hands, and examined his face in the mirror above the basin. He was looking very well.
On returning to the bedroom he said: "I hate very much to go back to Jalna without you, Finch. Everyone at home will be disappointed."
"I can't see them disappointed because I don't go back."
"But they will be. You don't understand. You're one of us, aren't you?"
"The odd one."
"Nonsense. We're all more or less oddities, I fancy. And we're proud of you, though you may not think so."
Finch grunted sarcastically. "You should have heard Renny and Piers telling me how proud they were of me!"
"Come, come, don't take things so hard. Piers has a rough tongue"
"He's as hard as nails! With me, anyhow."
"He doesn't always mean it, and, if he does, he's not the important one. It's Renny who matters."
