'So are they all,' growled Charles, 'dripping with kindness or burning with jealousy.... The theatrical woman!—It's a modern indecency.'
'And suppose I became one.'
'You couldn't.'
'But I'm going to.'
'You'd never stand it for a week, my dear. I'd ... I'd ...'
'What would you do?'
'I'd forbid it.'
'Then I should not stay with you.... You know that.'
Charles knew it. He had learned painfully that though she had some respect for his opinion, she had none for his authority.
He had more coffee, liqueurs, fruit, a cigar, gave the waiter a tip which sent him running to fetch the noble diner's overcoat, and, hailing a taxi, they drove the few hundred yards to the Imperium, where he growled, grunted, muttered, dashed his hands through his hair, and she sat with her eyes glued on the stage, and her brows puckered as the dull, illiterate version of Scott's novel, denuded of all dramatic quality, was paraded before her.... In an interval, Charles asked her what she thought of it.