"Pray, where did you read that?" said Charteris.
"I didn't read it anywhere. It was simply a thought that came to me," Patricia lied, gently. "But don't let's try to be clever. Cleverness is always a tax, but before luncheon it is an extortion. Personally, it makes me feel as if I had attended a welsh-rabbit supper the night before. Your wife must be very patient."
"My wife," cried Charteris, in turn resolved to screen an unappreciative mate, "is the most dear and most kind-hearted among the Philistines. And yet, at times, I grant you—"
"Oh, but, of course!" Patricia said impatiently. "I don't for a moment question that your wife is an angel."
"And why?" His eyebrows lifted, and he smiled.
"Why, wasn't it an angel," Patricia queried, all impishness now, "who kept the first man and woman out of paradise?"
"If—if I thought you meant that——!" he cried; and then he shrugged his shoulders. "My wife's virtues merit a better husband than Fate has accorded her. Anne is the best woman I have ever known."
Patricia was not unnaturally irritated. After all, one does not take the trouble to meet a man accidentally in a plantation of young beech-trees in order to hear him discourse of his wife's good qualities; and besides, Mr. Charteris was speaking in a disagreeably solemn manner, rather as if he fancied himself in a cathedral.
Therefore Patricia cast down her eyes again, and said:
"Men of genius are so rarely understood by their wives."