"It's men like you who say that," she retorted, smiling. "Go and forget us for an hour."
He went without more words—with only such a shrug as he had given when he said good-bye to Mrs. Freere. Isobel sat on, by dozing Mrs. Belfield, the picture of a dutiful neglected companion, while Wellgood and Harry played billiards, and Belfield, wheezing over an unread evening paper, honoured her with a tribute of distrustful curiosity. Left alone in the flesh, she could boast that she occupied several minds that evening. Perhaps she knew it, as she sat silent, thoughtfully gazing across to where Vivien and Andy sat together, their dim figures just visible in enshrouding darkness. "He saw—but he won't speak!" she was thinking.
"How funny of Harry to say he sighed as a lover!" Vivien remarked to Andy.
Andy had the pride and pleasure of informing her that her lover was indulging in a quotation from another lover, more famous and more temperate.
"'I sighed as a lover. I obeyed as a son.' I see! How funny! Do you think Gibbon was right, Mr. Hayes?"
"The oldest question since men had sons and women had lovers, isn't it?"
"Doesn't love come first—when once it has come?"
"After honour, the poet tells us, Miss Wellgood."
Vivien knew that quotation, anyhow. "It's beautiful, but isn't it—just a little priggish?"
"I think we must admit that it's at least a very graceful apology," laughed Andy.