“Well, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Lee cast a puzzled look at Mauney, who sat, as if in reverie, gazing up through blue rings of smoke that emerged in slow clouds from his mouth.
“Are you suddenly overtaken with a bachelor’s remorse?” Max queried, sarcastically. “Is that why you come in here to disturb my faithful studies? Why envy me so much? Why don’t you nab onto somebody yourself? You’ve got more to recommend you than I have.”
Mauney was not listening to him, but continued gazing up at the ceiling. Even there he could not avoid the vision of a woman’s dark, comforting eyes.
“You’ve got better mating points than I have. You’re a better man than I am, Gunga-din. Look at that chest of yours—any woman would sigh petulantly to have her head pillowed there. All you got to do is to go out and walk down Tower Street and the girls will be running into lamp-posts as they turn to behold your Apollo-like form.”
Mauney looked into Max’s face, confused.
“What?” he asked.
“Oh I didn’t say anything. I was just humming a snatch from Mendelssohn’s ‘Fatal Step.’ Say, Mauney, what the devil’s the matter with you, anyhow?”
“Nothing.”