'But you always do confess,' said Edith, 'not to priests, perhaps, but to friends; to acquaintances, at clubs, to girls you take in to dinner. You don't call it confessing, you call it telling them a curious thing that you happen to remember.'
'He calls it conversing,' said Madame Frabelle. She then gave a slight flippant giggle, afterwards correcting it by a thoughtful sigh.
'The Rev. Byrne Fraser, of course, is very High Church,' Bruce said. 'I understood he was Anglican. By the way, was Aylmer Ross a Roman Catholic?'
'I think he is.'
Bruce having mentioned his name, Edith now told him the news about her visit to their friend. Bruce liked good news—more, perhaps, because it was news than because it was good—yet the incident seemed to put him in a rather bad temper. He was sorry for Aylmer's illness, glad he was better, proud of knowing him, or, indeed, of knowing anyone who had been publicly mentioned; and jealous of the admiration visible in both Edith and Madame Frabelle. This medley of feeling resulted in his taking up a book and saying:
'Good heavens! Again I've found you've dog's-eared my book, Edith!'
'I only turned down a page,' she said gently.
'No, you haven't; you've dog's-eared it. It's frightfully irritating, dear, how you take no notice of my rebukes or my comments. Upon my word, what I say to you seems to go in at one ear and out at the other, just like water on a duck's back.'
'How does the water on a duck's back get into the dog's ears?—I mean the duck's ears. Oh, I'm sorry. I won't do it again.'
Bruce sighed, flattened out the folded page and left the room with quiet dignity, but caught his foot in the mat. Both ladies ignored the accident.