"She cannot keep it," said Dodo. "It is an impossibility for her. She made it under different conditions, and you put your hand to it under the same. And Nadine said you understood, and behaved so delightfully yesterday. All honor to you, since behind your behavior there was that knowledge, that royalty."
"I had to. But don't think I abdicated. But she was in terrible distress, and really, Aunt Dodo, the rest of your guests were quite idiotic. Berts looked like a frog; he had the meaningless pathos of a frog on his silly face—"
"Nadine said he looked like a funeral with plumes," Dodo permitted herself to interpolate.
"More like a frog. Edith kept pouring out glasses of port to take to Nadine, but I think she usually forgot and drank them herself. It was a lunatic asylum. But Nadine felt."
"Ah, my dear," said Dodo, with a movement of her hand on to his.
Seymour quietly disengaged his own.
"Very gratifying," he said, "but as I said, I take nobody's word for it, except Nadine's. She has got to tell me herself. Where is she? I have to go in five minutes, but to see her will still leave me four to spare."
Dodo got up.
"You shall see her," she said. "But come quietly, because she is asleep."
"If she is only to talk to me in her sleep—" began he.