Outbreak of Love Read Online Free

good deal of trouble to do something which he should have done for himself, and he had only blamed her for the result. She wondered why he was so anxious to be able to laugh tomorrow. She imagined that he was going to meet some girl, possibly one of his pupils, and take her to tea or a concert. She no longer questioned him about his engagements, as she found that his answers were dictated solely by what he thought she would like to believe. She accepted, with everything else, his mild infatuations and regarded them much as a mother who, with slight irritation, tolerates the calf love of a schoolboy son. She did not think them serious, though there had twice been trouble with parents, and there was that dreadful day when he had kissed Anthea, one of the Edward Langtons’ twins, at a Sunday tea-party in Uncle Arthur’s garden. It was only, as Wolfie explained, that he loved youth. All the same she thought it just a little too outrageous to send her into Melbourne to get his plate mended, so that he could take a girl out to tea.
    Then she thought she was now upset because he said she had interrupted his composition. At one time he said that he could not compose unless she was near him, but that was only as long as she retained her first youth. He said youth was necessary to his music, and she accepted the schoolgirls because of that, and because she really believed that he was a great composer. Those three savage chords he had played had given her a slight shiver of pleasure. They came to him in sudden inspiration from his anger. The trouble was that he had genius, but not great talent. Unless some spirit flowed into him he could not create. He could not sit down at any time and compose a competent piece of music. When he tried it was dreadful. The buds did not blossom. Then she began to feel amused with him. “Oh well,” she thought, “he’s like that. I’ve always known it, and it’s silly to start hurt feelings at this stage. And after all if I hadn’t gone to Melbourne, I should not have met Russell, and that was pleasant.”
    She went on clip-clip-clipping at the hedge. The cut cypress was pleasantly aromatic in the evening air, and she felt peaceful and contented, as so often when gardening.

CHAPTER TWO
    On the following afternoon Wolfie dressed himself with unusual care, and immediately after tea he left for Melbourne, so that he would not be too late for the dentist. When he had retrieved his tooth he walked down Collins Street to a new block of flats, and rang the bell of one occupied by a Mrs Montaubyn. She opened the door herself, dragged him inside, and enveloping him in soft lace and scented feathers, kissed him long and moistly on the mouth. Wolfie melted in bliss.
    â€œWell, you old Dingo,” she exclaimed as she released him, “for once you’re not late.” She called him by this name as it was more Australian than Wolfie, and it was her very own.
    â€œIt is because I had to collect my tooth from the dentist,” said Wolfie, “who is nearby.”
    â€œSo you think more of your dentist than of me,” retorted Mrs Montaubyn. “You don’t keep him waiting.”
    â€œThat is foolish. I do not love my dentist,” explained Wolfie. “But I had to obtain my tooth or I could not have come to you.”
    â€œYou are a scream, Dingo,” she cried in her rather throaty powerful voice. “I don’t love you for your tooth.” She shook with silent laughter, like some confection of which the basis is jelly, carried by an unsteady waiter. When the laughter ceased she gave out a long gust of air, like an expiring balloon.
    â€œYou would not have admired my laughter,” said Wolfie seriously, which drew a fresh gust from Mrs Montaubyn, who was in what has been called “the tea-time of life”, which suggests another comparison.
    A friend may give us in London, in January, some tulips in a pot. At first they stand,