"Capital!" he said, sitting down happily and pulling up his trousers to show light grey socks. Life was itself again. "Couldn't be better. What do you think? Guess."
"It might be anything at all, you see," she said with desolating common sense. "I never guess; it's only wasting time; so tell me."
"Well," began Geoffrey Alison, a little crushed, "I called along yesterday, after our talk, to tell Blatchley he had acted like a common cad."
"I don't see that's so very splendid," she objected. "You might have done it sooner, and anyhow he must have known that all the time. He only did it to get money, and he's getting it."
The other sighed, such a sigh as man has ever sighed when arguing with woman.
"You women will interrupt," he said loftily. Yes, they were quite on their old terms again.... "If you would only let me finish, I was going to tell you that he said he knew he had acted too hastily but that he hoped you would believe—and then he told a pack of lies, but here's the point." He spoke impressively. "If you'll let him have the new book, he'll pay you two hundred pounds down, only as a first dab of the royalties of course, and boom it better than ever, and he guarantees a still greater success, providing it's one half as good. So there, Miss Zoë, what do you think of your agent now?"
She did not exhibit the delirious gratitude which he clearly had expected. She sat, obviously thinking; and he for his part reflected that women were odd devils, however well you knew them. Surely nobody could know a woman better than he knew little Zoë; he saw more of her now than Brett did; talked to her with the direct ease of a husband—said just what he thought. Hadn't he just told her not to interrupt? Well, that meant knowing a girl pretty well; yet if any one had told him that she wouldn't be delighted about this book she wanted to write so much——
"I shall have to ask Hugh," she said very slowly, breaking in upon his thoughts.
This was the last word.... Ask Hugh! Ask Brett, who had behaved like a damned swine about the other book, who wouldn't speak to her except to snub her, who thought of nothing except his own rotten work! The girl must be mad!
"Ask him?" he said in amazement.