He looked at the Sea Lady as if he were already incredulous of the things they had said, as if he had been asleep and dreamed the talk. Some light seemed to go out, some fancy faded. His eye rested upon the inscription, “Flamps, Bath Chair Proprietor,” just visible under her arm.
“We’ve got perhaps a little more serious than—” he said doubtfully, and then, “What you have been saying—did you exactly mean——?”
The rustle of Mrs. Bunting’s advance became audible, and Parker moved and coughed.
He was quite sure they had been “more serious than——”
“Another time perhaps——”
Had all these things really been said, or was he under some fantastic hallucination?
He had a sudden thought. “Where’s your cigarette?” he asked.
But her cigarette had ended long ago.
“And what have you been talking about so long?” sang Mrs. Bunting, with an almost motherly hand on the back of Melville’s chair.
“Oh!” said Melville, at a loss for once, and suddenly rising from his chair to face her, and then to the Sea Lady with an artificially easy smile, “What have we been talking about?”