They sat one on either side of the fire. She felt like an ancestress or a family portrait. The rosy haze of her tea-gown looked strange and alien fluttering in the huge leather armchair.
"What a wisp you look," St. John said. She remembered how satisfactory her tininess had always been to him. "I think I could blow you away with a puff of smoke."
"I am a limpet really," she laughed, "think how I have stuck to your life."
"Thank God," he affirmed fervently.
"Are you still a great flirt, St. John?"
He looked at her in amazement.
"You have surely not forgotten the way you played fast and loose with me?"
"Ariadne," he was using the firm voice she knew so well, "you mustn't talk like that."
"But you did. Don't you remember that dinner you gave when we went to the L——'s ball and you never danced with me till seventeen minutes past one?"
"My dear, I was saving you up. The joy after all the duties."