"Both for both, Harry. Toleration to-day, and an unlimited power of oblivion to-morrow."
"What nonsense you're talking, dear," placidly smiled Mrs. Belfield.
"I'm exactly defining your own characteristics," he replied. "If you do that to a woman, she always says you're talking nonsense."
"An unlimited supply of the water of Lethe, pater? That does it?"
"That's about it, Harry. If you mix it with a little sound Scotch whisky before you go to bed—"
Andy burst into a good guffaw; the kindly mocking humour pleased him. Vivien was alert too; there was nothing to frighten, much to enjoy; the glow deepened on her cheeks.
But Wellgood was not content; he was baulked of his argument, of his fight.
"We've wandered from the point," he said dourly. ("As if wanderings were not the best things in the world!" thought more than one of the party, more or less explicitly.) "We give, they take." He was back to the United Kingdom and the Colonies.
"Could anything be more nicely exact to my parallel?" asked Belfield, socratically smiling. "Did you ever know a marriage where each partner didn't say, 'I give, you take'? Some add that they're content with the arrangement, others don't."
"Pater, you always mix up different things," Harry protested, laughing.