“I’m only trying to get at your meaning.”
“Well . . . marriage is an everyday affair—a matter of superficialities if you like; breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have to live by little things when this passes. . . .”
“What makes you think this feeling we have for each other will pass?” demanded Joe. “That is not like you.”
“Well . . . everybody says it will pass . . .”
“Who is everybody . . . Wilfred Pell?”
Elaine straightened up in anger. She tossed the cigarette into the fire. “Don’t be common and tiresome!” she said. “Do you think I would allow Wilfred Pell to discuss my private affairs with me?—or any other man? . . . What on earth made you think of him?”
“I dunno,” said Joe indifferently. “I just had a hunch. . . . Just the same, it was Wilfred Pell.”
“Oh, very well!” said Elaine hotly. “Then I am a liar!”
There was a silence. Joe whistled softly between his teeth.
“Not that I give a damn,” he presently said, good-humoredly. “A man like Wilfred Pell couldn’t trouble my peace any. I know the white-faced, hungry-eyed breed. You will always find them in a woman’s room whispering with her. That’s as near as they get, poor devils! sympathetic and safe!”