“Oh, this is jolly,” he said, “for we’ve gone on just where we left off. You’re just the same. It’s two months, you know, since I set eyes on you. Do say you’ve missed me.”
“What else did you expect?” said she. “Marriage isn’t—— Oh, Peter, what’s the name of that river?”
“Thames?” asked Peter.
“No, the forgetting one—Lethe. Because I’m married to Philip I don’t forget—other people. But tell me, has Silvia been giving you Lethe to drink instead of early morning tea?”
“Not a drop. She’s given me everything else in the world.”
Nellie still had that habit of plaiting her fingers together.
“You ought to be very grateful to me,” she said. “It was I, after all, one night at my mother’s flat, do you remember?”
“I was Jacob that night,” remarked Peter.
Nellie frowned.
“Don’t tell me how,” she said. “I want to see if we think side by side still. Ah, I’ve got it! Philip was Esau—isn’t that clever?—and I told him I was tired, and so you supplanted him.”