“Were you going to make it under twenty?”
“Yes, I was.”
“I don’t believe you. Yes, I do, I do! You are an artist. You realize that truth is a question of feeling, not a question of fact. You penetrate beneath the gray hairs as the prosaic never do. This butter is delicious! And to think that there have been moments when I have feared butter, when I have kept an eye upon a corpulent future. Give me some more, plenty more.”
Vere stretched out her hand to the tea-table, but it shook. She drew it back, and burst into a peal of laughter.
“What are you laughing at?” said Artois, with burlesque majesty.
“At you. What’s the matter with you, Monsieur Emile? How can you be so foolish?”
She lay back in her chair, with her hair streaming about her, and her thin body quivered, as if the sense of fun within her were striving to break through its prison walls.
“This,” said Artois, “this is sheer impertinence. I venture to inquire for butter, and—”
“To inquire! One, two, three, four—five pats of butter right in front of you! And you inquire—!”
Artois suddenly sent out a loud roar to join her childish treble.