'You must kindly stand up,' said Mr. Dolbiac. 'I can't hear.'
Miss Marchrose glanced at Mrs. Ashton Portway, and Mrs. Ashton Portway told Mr. Dolbiac that he was on no account to be silly.
Then Mr. Ashton Portway and Geraldine both began to speak at once, and then insisted on being silent at once, and in the end Mr. Ashton Portway was induced to say something about Dulcinea.
'He's chosen Don Quixote,' his wife informed Henry behind her hand. 'It's his favourite novel.'
The discussion proceeded under difficulties, for no one was loquacious except Mr. Dolbiac, and all Mr. Dolbiac's utterances were staccato and senseless. The game had had several narrow escapes of extinction, when Miss Marchrose galvanized it by means of a long and serious monologue treating of the sorts of man with whom a self-respecting woman will never fall in love. There appeared to be about a hundred and thirty-three sorts of that man.
'There is one sort of man with whom no woman, self-respecting or otherwise, will fall in love,' said Mr. Dolbiac, 'and that is the sort of man she can't kiss without having to stand on the mantelpiece. Alas!'—he hid his face in his handkerchief—'I am that sort.'
'Without having to stand on the mantelpiece?' Mrs. Ashton Portway repeated. 'What can he mean? Mr. Dolbiac, you aren't playing the game.'
'Yes, I am, gracious lady,' he contradicted her.
'Well, what character are you, then?' demanded Miss Marchrose, irritated by his grotesque pendant to her oration.
'I'm Gerald in A Question of Cubits.'