"Yes! Yes . . . Ugly . . . Too . . . oh . . . private!"
He said, he remembered:
"But . . . for ever . . ."
She said, in a great hurry:
"But when you come back. . . . Permanently. And . . . oh, as if it were in public." . . . "I don't know," she had added. "Ought we? . . . I'd be ready. . . ." She added: "I will be ready for anything you ask."
He had said at some time: "But obviously. . . . Not under this roof. . . ." And he had added: "We're the sort that . . . do not!"
She had answered, quickly too:
"Yes—that's it. We're that sort!" And then she had asked: "And Ethel's party? Was it a great success?" It hadn't, she knew, been an inconsequence. He had answered:
"Ah . . . That's permanent. . . . That's public. . . . There was Rugeley. The Duke . . . Sylvia brought him. She'll be a great friend! . . . And the President of the . . . Local Government Board, I think . . . And a Belgian . . . equivalent to Lord Chief Justice . . . and, of course, Claudine Sandbach. . . . Two hundred and seventy; all of the best, the modestly-elated Guggumses said as I left! And Mr. Ruggles . . . Yes! . . . They're established. . . . No place for me!"
"Nor for me!" she had answered. She added: "But I'm glad!"