The cloud had begun to drift, but the horizon was not clear yet.
"Oh! don't ask me," he said tragically. "I tell you I never know what I say, and I get so dreadfully confused. I said—Oh, Lord! what did I say. I said that an ugly woman—oh, dear!—that an ugly woman can't do the things which, if a beautiful woman did, she wouldn't be thought a beast," he explained, with a fine disregard of coherency.
"Oh! but, Reggie, that's exactly what you said you didn't say."
"No, it isn't," said Reggie, who, though not exactly bored, wanted to talk about something else. "I said something about a beautiful woman being the fashion, which an ugly woman can't be."
"What do you mean by the fashion?"
"Why, I mean the fashion," said Reggie; "the rage, the comme il something, the thing everybody else does—balloon sleeves and dachshunds, you know."
"Are you sure you only meant that sort of fashion?" asked she.
"Oh! yes, of course I am. Oh! do let's talk about something else."
But Gertrude was vaguely dissatisfied. The cloud had left a little drift of mist behind.