They were having martinis in the same bar in which Norbert had, so many years ago, successfully said unsuccessfully.
"They've been good years," he remarked, apparently to the olive.
There was something wrong with this evening. No bounce. No yumph. "That's a funny tense," Manning confided to her own olive. "Aren't they still good years?"
"I've owed you a serious talk for a long time."
"You don't have to pay the debt. We don't go in much for being serious, do we? Not so dead-earnest-catch-in-the-throat serious."
"Don't we?"
"I've got an awful feeling," Manning admitted, "that you're building up to a proposal, either to me or that olive. And if it's me, I've got an awful feeling I'm going to accept—and Raquel will never forgive me."
"You're safe," Norbert said dryly. "That's the serious talk. I want to marry you, darling, and I'm not going to."
"I suppose this is the time you twirl your black mustache and tell me you have a wife and family elsewhere?"