The man broke down.
“Elizabeth,” he exclaimed, “you are too—too ghastly! I can't stand it. You are unnatural.”
She stretched herself upon the couch and turned towards him.
“Unnatural, am I?” she remarked. “And what are you?”
He sank into a chair. He had become very flabby indeed.
“What you are always calling me, I suppose,” he muttered,—“a coward. You have so little consideration, Elizabeth. My health isn't what it was.”
His eyes had wandered longingly toward the cupboard at the further end of the apartment. The woman upon the couch smiled.
“You may help yourself,” she directed carelessly. “Perhaps then you will be able to tell me why you have come in such a state.”
He crossed the room in a few hasty steps, his head and shoulders disappeared inside the cupboard. There was the sound of the withdrawal of a cork, the fizz of a sodawater syphon. He returned to his place a different man.
“You must remember my age, Elizabeth dear,” he said, apologetically. “I haven't your nerve—it isn't likely that I should have. When I was twenty-five, there was nothing in the world of which I was afraid.”