“This story,” snarled Johnny, “is not only about a comb but about a Mr. Jones and a Mrs. Jones as well. If you guess that they were man and wife you will not be wrong. And what’s more, Mr. Jones loved his wife very dearly, even though he hadn’t enough money to do it with from every angle. For of all the things Mrs. Jones passionately wanted, besides of course Mr. Jones, was a tortoise-shell comb; which, she thought, would become her very well, for her hair was of the colour of a landscape at sunset, streaked with ochre. So at last Mr. Jones secretly managed to scrape together as much money as he could find lying about in his employer’s offices, and bought her a very adequate tortoise-shell comb——”
“You have cribbed O. Henry’s!” cried Lois.
“—— comb. Mrs. Jones adored it and adored him, and every one was happy. Now I ask you, how were they to know that the shopkeeper had seen Mr. Jones coming and had sold him a celluloid imitation comb instead of a tortoise-shell one? And so one evening, as Mrs. Jones was doing her hair for Mr. Jones’s arrival, celluloid being very inflammable, it caught fire, and the fire caught her hair, and Mrs. Jones was utterly burnt up when Mr. Jones arrived for dinner....”
“And a very good story, too,” said Ivor pleasantly. “I liked the sting at the end....”
“Johnny,” cried Lois. “Explain yourself.”
“Well, my dear,” said little Johnny humbly, “I’m frightfully sorry, but, don’t you see, Mr. Jones drew the insurance-money for his wife’s death....”
2
They had dined late, and it was nearly midnight when Ivor and Virginia were at last comfortably stretched on two of the wicker arm-chairs on the verandah: for, of course, it was perfectly clear from the moment of his arrival that they must in the next few hours be sitting together on that verandah. The air was chilly with the chill of a Riviera night in February, and Virginia, lying deep in her chair, had wrapped her moleskin coat well about her: for in the year 1919 the moleskin coat was at its ascendant, whence it has since been driven by barbarians, led by one Mr. Kolinsky....
There was no moon, only stars set brilliantly in the soft black onyx of the sky: a black night, and very silent on Cimiez; and a black and silent prospect from the verandah, intensified rather than broken by the distant reflection below of the lights of Nice on the velvet void which was a sea by day.
The hill of Cimiez is always of a silent habit at night, for its world is either in bed or the Casino, and the rattle of the tram-cars up and down the hill ceases by ten o’clock. Ivor and Virginia seemed to have borrowed something of the silence of the Cimiez midnight, for they sat silent for a long time, for what seemed a long time. And the light from the long windows opening out on the terrace fell brilliantly on them.