"I mean when you and I were alone together, before we turned in."
"Oh, yes. I remember something about it."
"It would be too silly to expect you to remember much," he went on after a pause, with a more delicate irony than heretofore. "But, as a matter of fact, I believe I said it was all rot that people talked about the impossibility of being mere pals with a woman, and all that sort of thing."
"I believe you did.'"
"Well, then, that was rot. That's all."
I turned round with my razor in mid-air,
"My dear fellow!" I exclaimed.
"Quite funny, isn't it?" he laughed, but rather harshly, while his mountain bronze deepened under my scrutiny.
"You are not in earnest, Bob!" said I; and on the word his laughter ended, his colour went.
"I am," he answered through his teeth. "Are you?"