She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back to me:
“Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the world for me?”
There! That’s what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you’d have thought she would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that sort of thing, what?
Mind you, I had said I would do anything in the world for her. I admit that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn’t appeared on the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who may have been a perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to her, doesn’t feel nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction when she has given him the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man who reason and instinct both tell him is a decided blighter.
I couldn’t think of anything to say but “Oh, yes.”
“There’s something you can do for me now, which will make me everlastingly grateful.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you know, Reggie,” she said suddenly, “that only a few months ago Clarence was very fond of cats?”
“Eh! Well, he still seems—er—interested in them, what?”
“Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves.”