"Oh, friends!" I retorted. "If she's going to keep her husband a friend she's got her hands full. Certainly I'm not jealous of you and Bill, Carrie. But it's not friends most of us want, if you're after the truth. We want passionate but perfectly respectable, commandment-keeping lovers!"
Carrie laughed, but her colour died down.
"How silly you are!" she said, and got up. "Maybe we'd like to feel that we're not clear out of the game, but that's all. We're a little tired of being taken for granted. I don't want a lover; I want amusement, and if I'd married Harry Delaney I'd have had it."
"If you'd married him he would have been down there at the pool, showing off like a goldfish in a bowl, the same as the others."
"He would not. He can't swim," said Carrie, and sauntered away. Somehow I got the impression that she had been sounding me, and had got what she wanted. She looked very handsome that night, and wore the necklace. Someone commented on it at dinner, and Wallie glared across at it.
"It isn't paid for," he said, "and as far as I can see, it never will be."
Of course, even among old friends, that was going rather far.
Well, the usual thing happened after dinner. The men smoked and argued, and we sat on the terrace and yawned. When they did come out it was to say that golf and swimming had made them sleepy, and Jim Elliott went asleep in his chair. Carrie said very little, except once to lean over and ask me if I remembered the name of the man Alice Warrington had thrown over for Ted. When I told her she settled back into silence again.
The next morning all the husbands were up early and off to the club for a Sunday's golfing. At ten o'clock a note came in on my breakfast tray from Carrie.
"Slip on something and come to my room," it said.