“I prefer sad tales; there is more strength in a sob than in a giggle. Anything, so long as they are not commonplace. So long as the people don’t marry in the last chapter. I’m so sick of sane, respectable people who do exactly what they ought to do. Gerald has a regular income—that blight on originality. I was doomed to middle-class ease from my very cradle.”
“I wonder if you really are broad-minded. I wonder! You are not very young——”
“Nowadays a woman only comes of age at thirty.”
“After thirty she is often a prude.”
“But I am not so very much after. Why waste time in parrying? Tell me a story at once. Let this be the first sitting.”
*****
“It was very stupid of me to clutch your arm like that—to scream. A scream is the admission of small intellect, of nerves, of everything that went out with smelling-bottles. But that noise startled me—it was the prologue to your tale—too realistic. What was it? I think it came from that house across the way, from that open window on the third floor, with the blue window box.”
“From No. 7. Yes; of course.”
“How somber you look!”
“I must go and see what is up. Promise me to keep quite still. Don’t even look out of the window.”