He looked at her reproachfully. �Do you call this the last?�
She smiled as he dropped into the seat across the hearth. �It�s a way of giving it more flavor!�
He returned the smile. �A visit to you doesn�t need such condiments.�
She took this with just the right measure of retrospective amusement.
�Ah, but I want to put into this one a very special taste,� she confessed.
Her smile was so confident, so reassuring, that it lulled him into the imprudence of saying, �Why should you want it to be different from what was always so perfectly right?�
She hesitated. �Doesn�t the fact that it�s the last constitute a difference?�
�The last—my last visit to you?�
�Oh, metaphorically, I mean—there�s a break in the continuity.�
Decidedly, she was pressing too hard: unlearning his arts already!