The two Venetian vases were on the mantelpiece. Vera rose into ecstasies about them, and called upon Charlie Woodruff to rise too. He got up from his chair to examine the vases, which Vera had placed close together side by side at the corner of the mantelpiece nearest to him. Vera and Woodruff also stood close together side by side. And just as Woodruff was about to handle the vases, Vera knocked his arm; his arm collided with one vase; that vase collided with the next, and both fell to earth—to the hard, unfeeling, unyielding tiles of the hearth.
IV
They were smashed to atoms.
Vera screamed. She screamed twice, and ran out of the room.
'Stephen, Stephen!' she cried hysterically. 'Charlie has broken my vases, both of them. It IS too bad of him. He's really too clumsy!'
There was a terrific pother. Stephen wakened violently, and in a moment all three were staring ineffectually at the thousand crystal fragments on the hearth.
'But—' began Charlie Woodruff.
And that was all he did say.
He and Vera and Stephen had been friends since infancy, so she had the right not to conceal her feelings before him; Stephen had the same right. They both exercised it.
'But—' began Charlie again.