“Then I guess he’s only a soft. But how did you hear?”
“I called him into the parlour and asked. I asked him whether I should succeed on the stage.”
A pause, during which Bernard framed, and discarded as useless, a reproof. “What did he say?”
“He said I should.”
“I don’t see you can count that. I guess it wouldn’t be good manners for him to tell you you wouldn’t.”
“He did mean it. He wasn’t particularly polite.”
“What did he do?”
“Oh, nothing actually rude. It was odd,” said Dolly, reflectively. “At first he was—oh, Bernard, you know what I mean: turned out on a pattern and polished, like all the other gentlemen we’ve seen. I was rather nervous; but I meant to go through with it. Then his manner seemed to break in half. He was almost brutal. I must say I rather liked that; it was raw nature. And quite at the end he apologised, and said that he’d had sunstroke in Africa. Do you think that likely to be true?”
“I couldn’t say,” said Bernard. “I know he’s been in Africa.”
“What! out at the front? How painfully ordinary!”