"No," he denied.
"Don't contradict me, and don't be silly." She pushed the other chair toward him. "Sit down and tell me how you've been enduring the interval. It is more than a year, isn't it?"
"Yes. A year, three months, and eleven days." He had taken the chair beside her because there seemed to be nothing else to do.
"How mathematically exact you are!" she gibed. "To-morrow it will be a year, three months, and twelve days; and the day after to-morrow—mercy me! I should go mad if I had to think back and count up that way every day. But I asked you what you had been doing."
He spread his hands. "Existing, one way and another. There has always been my work."
"'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,'" she quoted. "You are excessively dull to-day, Howard. Hasn't it occurred to you?"
"Thank you for expressing it so delicately. It seems to be my misfortune to disappoint you, always."
"Yes," she said, quite unfeelingly. Then, with a swift relapse into pure mockery: "How many times have you fallen in love during the one year, three months, and eleven days?"
His frown was almost a scowl. "Is it worth while to make an unending jest of it, Eleanor?"
"A jest?—of your falling in love? No, my dear cousin, several times removed, no one would dare to jest with you on that subject. But tell me; I am really and truly interested. Will you confess to three times? That isn't so very many, considering the length of the interval."