“My eye,” said his wife coldly, flicking a cigarette ash in his direction. “They were all over us and you know it.”
Wimpole mooned out of the tent while I was telling his lady of my fortunate application of the “pons asinorum.”
“What is that?” she queried. “My French is atrocious.”
“An old geometric theorem; the bridge of asses over which every school donkey must pass.”
“And you did!” she enthused. “How clearly it brings home the advantage of a college education.”
Thus we passed long hours in tender confidence during which I told her many things, she listening for the most part, as I recounted my life from its infancy, with a nursery anecdote here and there, some droll saying or madcap prank which I played on Miss Stafford, my first teacher. No detail seemed too slight to interest this wonderful creature to whom I vowed to bare my whole existence. Step by step I worked my way through infancy to adolescence, boyish sports, my skill at mumblety-peg, my first affair with Norah Flaherty who worked in the melodeon factory....
It was at the close of this tender incident that she bent over me late one evening to tuck me in, her rose-rimmed eyes glowing into mine. Involuntarily my arm encircled her gaunt framework drawing her down, close ... close. Thus she knelt by my cot for a long moment before she rose with an effort at self mastery.
“I think you can get up tomorrow,” she murmured, and the curtains swished softly on the night air.
“What happened to Azad?” I asked one day.
Whinney, who was visiting me, flicked an ash from his cigarette.