“Yes?” she said with that unresolved, rising inflexion which provokes a man to open the quarrel.
“No one else could have carried off that audacity,” I said.
She let that pass.
“I wonder what your archaic sculptor man would think of it?” I said. “He wasn’t here.... We haven’t seen him for a long time.”
She shrugged her shoulders and continued to gaze into the smoke of her cigarette.
“So you are bored,” I said. “A world of your own, a lord at your feet, and still you are bored.”
“Do you mean to pick a quarrel with me?” she asked.
“I wish to cancel our bargain,” I said. “The one we made that time long ago in the tea shop.”
“Very well,” she said. “It is cancelled.”
“Is that all?”