The Rampions lived in Chelsea. Their house consisted of one large studio with three or four little rooms tacked onto it. A very nice little place, in its rather ramshackle way, Burlap reflected, as he rang the bell that Saturday afternoon. And Rampion had bought it for nothing, literally for nothing, just before the war. No postwar rents for him. A sheer gift of a hundred and fifty a year. "Lucky devil! " thought Burlap, forgetting for the moment that he himself was living rent-free at Beatrice's, and only remembering that he had just spent twenty-four and ninepence on a luncheon for himself and Molly d'Exergillod.
Mary Rampion opened the door. "Mark's expecting you in the studio," she said when salutations had been exchanged. "Though why on earth," she was inwardly wondering, "why on earth he goes on being friendly with this creature passes all comprehension. " She herself detested Burlap. "He's a sort of vulture," she had said to her husband after the journalist's previous visit. "No, not a vulture, because vultures only eat carrion. He's a parasite that feeds on living hosts, and always the choicest he can find. He has a nose for the choicest; I'll grant him that. A spiritual leech, that's what he is. Why do you let him suck your blood?"
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