“What’s the matter, my dear?” she said. “There’s something wrong.”
He got up and drove with his foot into the log fire.
“It’s really screamingly funny that you should tell me that,” he said.
Nellie felt that they were getting near it now.
“Funny?” she asked.
“Oh, Lord, I said funny, didn’t I?” said he.
She got up too, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“My dear, we’re very old friends,” she said.
He turned round to her with some unspoken bitterness souring in his eyes.
“Then I’ll let you have the joke,” he said. “You tell me that, and yet my wife, who knows the same thing about herself, has not told me.”