“Well, you are a beast!” Cissy gasped. It was outrageous, such outspoken depravity!
“Oh, let me have my finger in the pie,” he pleaded. “I wanted your Longacre somewhere else. If he must make love to some one, why not to Julia? It would be so awfully convenient for me, you know.”
“Well, he didn’t!” said Cissy, triumphantly.
“No, he did not,” Thair admitted gracefully. “Nor to you. We all go into the same ditch.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” In their conversations this was the chronic state of Cissy’s intelligence. Thair smiled pleasantly. But her next move brought him up roundly.
“Who are you talking about?”
“Whom?” He was imperturbably vague about her personal application.
“Who did he make love to?”
On this, Thair’s air of being delicately shocked was maddening.
“My good Cicely, how should I know? If you knew,” he pursued with an air of mammoth secrecy, “what I was up to—”