"They treasure up every one of your pictures in the illustrated papers, and probably pray for you every night. It's rather wonderful."
She went upstairs to change.
That evening he said to her:
"You do think, don't you, that there is something eternal in marriage?"
She looked at him.
"But Clifford, you make eternity sound like a lid or a long, long chain that trailed after one, no matter how far one went."
He looked at her, annoyed.
"What I mean," he said, "is that if you go to Venice, you won't go in the hopes of some love affair that you can take au grand sérieux, will you?"
"A love affair in Venice au grand sérieux? No, I assure you! No, I'd never take a love affair in Venice more than au très petit sérieux."
She spoke with a queer kind of contempt. He knitted his brows, looking at her.