“However these remarks do not apply to you and me, for as I think I told you once before in that cedar wood in Kendah Land where you feared lest I should catch a chill, or become—odd again, it is another you with whom something in me seems to be so intimate.”
“That’s fortunate for your sake,” I muttered, still staring at and pointing to the silver plate.
Again she laughed. “Do you remember the Taduki herb?” she asked. “I have plenty of it safe upstairs, and not long ago I took a whiff of it, only a whiff because you know it had to be saved.”
“And what did you see?”
“Never mind. The question is what shall we both see?”
“Nothing,” I said firmly. “No earthly power will make me breathe that unholy drug again.”
“Except me,” she murmured with sweet decision. “No, don’t think about leaving the house. You can’t, there are no Sunday trains. Besides you won’t if I ask you not.”
“‘In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird,’” I replied, firm as a mountain.
“Is it? Then why are so many caught?”
At that moment the Bull of Bashan—I mean Smith, began to bellow something at his hostess from the other end of the table and our conversation came to an end.