“Oh, I don’t mind the place so much. It’s the people.”
“Yes, isn’t it? I know what you mean.”
“You can’t make a joke of everything, can you?”
“Indeed no,” sighed Dora.
Charlie looked at his cigarette, and, his eyes carefully fixed on it, said in a timid tone:
“What’s the point, for instance, of talking as if love was all bosh?”
Dora’s parasol swept down again swiftly, but Charlie was still looking at the cigarette and he did not notice its descent, nor could he see that Miss Bellairs’s cheek was no longer sallow.
“It’s such cheap rot,” he continued, “and when a fellow’s—I say, Miss Bellairs, I’m not boring you?”
The parasol wavered and finally moved.
“No,” said Miss Bellairs.