"Personally," put in Elsie Magnac, "I don't believe that any men are indifferent. It is women who are clumsy."
[V]
LEWIS shrugged his shoulders to show that he considered the conversation dull.
"Do you mind if I telephone to Martial?" he said abruptly. He made a point of not being a good talker, thinking that not to shine gave him greater authority.
"Of course: you know your way."
Lewis rang up his office. Martial answered. Lewis announced that he would not be dining with him that evening and that he would leave him to dine alone like an elder with two Susannas. Were they not both flaxen-fair and delightful things to feed?
"What did Fidius close at? What was the street price?"
A lady had telephoned several times from the Hôtel Meurice during the last hour. Lewis remembered that he had an appointment to meet an unknown lady there.
"Go along there before dinner, say you are me and tell her not to bother me," he told Martial.
He had neither the manners nor the polished speech of the middle-class young man, but behaved like a scion of the aristocracy.