“But it won’t be so easy to get home,” Virginia remarked, “if you have another drink....”
George Tarlyon leaned against the edge of the table: enjoying himself immensely, it seemed. So gay, so slack.... Ivor was immensely amused by him; anyway, he thought he was. He gave him another drink.
But Virginia looked tired, staring into the bright fire. She seemed suddenly to have lost all interest in the two men in the room.
“I say, I liked that book of yours,” Tarlyon said comfortably to Ivor. He stretched his legs out a little, towards the fire. “You know, that one called—something about a courtesan....”
“The Legend of the Last Courtesan,” Virginia said into the fire.
“That’s it, Virginia! Splendid book, I thought. I don’t have time to read as a rule, but I finished that—Virginia saying she knew you once, you know, and that you were clever.... Just the kind of book I’d like to write myself if I wasn’t a half-wit....”
“Which half?” asked Virginia softly. “So that I’ll know....”
“There you are, Marlay!” Tarlyon cried; and he laughed with his head thrown back and his eyes wrinkled up. “Virginia thinks I’m a most consummate ass, but when I do try talking the clever stuff for which I’ve a natural aptitude she quickly puts the lid on me.... But, seriously, Marlay, I did like that book of yours. You got the eighteenth century uncommonly well, I thought. And I think that word ‘courtesan’ is a considerate word—what I mean is that it was very decent of you to trouble to write a long word like ‘courtesan’ time over again, when you could have used a couple of short but septic ones just as well. Virginia, are you with me in this?... She yawns at me! Marlay, my wife yawns at me! All women yawn at the men they love—did Oscar Wilde say that, Marlay, or have I said a marvellous thing?”
“A marvellous thing, I think,” Ivor just managed to say. “Wilde said something like ‘All men kill the thing they love....’”
“Oh, that’s just a quibble—they come to the same thing. The man loves, the woman yawns, and then the man kills her! So I have said a marvellous thing after all! Are you listening, Virginia?”