“My lady,” he said. “My darling.”
Eve shook her glorious head.
“No,” she said. “No lady. Don’t call me that again. I’ve done the unspeakable thing. I know it. If you’d given me cause, it would’ve been the grossest form. But as things are . . .” She drew away and passed a hand over her eyes. “I think I must be possessed, Jeremy. Of course I hadn’t a leg—about the drinks, I mean. You were perfectly right. But I can mend that. I’ll never touch a cocktail again as long as I live. But I can’t mend the other.”
“It’s mended,” said Jeremy, taking her hands in his. “I made you mad as a hornet. I didn’t mean to, dear, but I’m clumsy, you know. Well, when you’re mad, you just pick up the first brick. You don’t care what it’s made of or what it is. The point is it’s something to heave.”
Eve looked him in the face.
“There was a label on that brick—‘Not to be Thrown,’ ” she said. “We’ve all got two or three bricks labelled like that—‘Do Not Touch,’ ‘Dangerous.’ . . . I think from what you said that brick is marked ‘Dangerous’ too.”
Jeremy bowed his head.
“Yes.”
“Jeremy,” said Eve, “you’ve something I haven’t got—thousands of things, of course, but especially one. And that’s my respect.”
Her husband smiled.