"It accounts for your very decent manner, and for your common sense. If you had been English I should have broken your neck before now."
Levin said:
"Thank you! I hope I always behave like an English gentleman. But I am going to be brutally direct now. . . ." He went on: "The really queer thing is that you should always address Miss Wannop in the language of the Victorian Correct Letter-Writer. You must excuse my mentioning the name: it shortens things. You said 'Miss Wannop' every two or three half-minutes. It convinced the general more than any possible assertions that your relations were perfectly . . ."
Tietjens, his eyes shut, said:
"I talked to Miss Wannop in my sleep. . . ."
Levin, who was shaking a little, said:
"It was very queer. . . . Almost ghostlike. . . . There you sat, your arms on the table. Talking away. You appeared to be writing a letter to her. And the sunlight streaming in at the hut. I was going to wake you, but he stopped me. He took the view that he was on detective work, and that he might as well detect He had got it into his mind that you were a Socialist."
"He would," Tietjens commented. "Didn't I tell you he was beginning to learn things? . . ."
Levin exclaimed:
"But you aren't a So . . ."