"If you don't clear out, Yaé, I will have to call T[=o] to take you," he threatened.
To his great relief she went quietly.
* * * * *
Reggie returned to the bare bedroom, where Geoffrey with bowed head was staring at the floor. In Reggie's short kimono the big man looked decidedly ridiculous.
"Good," thought Reggie. "Thank God for the comic spirit. It will be easier to get through with this now."
His first action was to wash his hands. He had an unconscious instinct for symbolism. Then he sat down opposite his friend.
The action of sitting reduces tragedy to comedy at once,—this was one of Napoleon's maxims.
Then he opened his cigarette case and offered it to Geoffrey. This, too, was symbolic. Geoffrey took a cigarette mechanically, and sucked it between his lips, unlighted.
"Geoffrey," said his friend very quietly, "let us try to put these women and all their rottenness out of our heads. We will try to talk this over decently."
Geoffrey was so stunned by the shock of what he had just learned that he had thought of nothing else. Now, all of a sudden he remembered that he owed serious explanations to his friend.