“Why, particularly, are you a "damned fool", Ray?” asked Eugene, a little curiosity in his eyes.
Raymond shrugged. “I don’t know. Did you order those buckets, Bart?”
“No, of course I didn’t. You said you’d attend to it yourself,” Bart replied, surprised.
“Oh!” Raymond coloured slightly. “All right: slipped my memory.”
“Good God, how are the mighty fallen!” exclaimed Conrad, folding a slice of bread-and-butter, and putting it into his mouth. “Chalk it up, somebody! The Great, the Methodical Ray has at last forgotten something he ought to have remembered! Keep it up, Ray: you’ll become quite human in time!”
Raymond smiled in a rather perfunctory way, and soon after left the room. Aubrey sighed audibly. “There is something more than oppressive about this house,” he said. “I expect you’re all quite used to it, but coming as I do from the beautiful peace of my own chambers it strikes me quite too dreadfully forcibly.” He described a vague gesture with his delicate hands. “I shan’t say that an evil influence appears to me to brood over the place, because I do think esoteric remarks of that nature are terribly embarrassing, don’t you? But you all seem to me to be a trifle more than life-size, and definitely febrile!”
“You’re perfectly right!” Charmian said. “But can you wonder at it?”
“No, my sweet. At least, I don’t mean to waste my time in trying. I’m just profoundly repelled. Something so deplorably indecorous about an uninhibited display of the more violent emotions, don’t you agree? Ah, no! How unremembering of me! You have just demonstrated to us, haven’t you, darling, that you don’t agree at all?”
As Eugene, who was as jealous of Aubrey’s clever tongue as he was of his success in the field of literature, began to engage him in a wordy duel, Faith got up, and quietly left the room.