“We must try to convert Jimmy,” she said. “I have a good deal of influence over him, Mr Melville. We must try to make him more like you, more thoughtful, more inactive, more frankly sensual, more fond of sofas, in the future than he has been in the past. Do you know, I am ashamed to say it, but I don't believe I have ever seen Jimmy lying on a sofa. Poor Jimmy! Look at that hen! She is choking. Hens gulp their food so! And then, he's inclined to be persistently unselfish. That must be stopped too. I have learnt from you that to be decadent one must be acutely and untiringly selfish. The blessings of selfishness! What a volume might be written upon them! Mr Melville, all chickens must be decadent, for all chickens are entirely selfish. It is strange to think that the average fowl is more advanced in ethics—is it ethics I mean?—than the average man or woman, is it not? And we ate a decadent at dinner last night. I feel almost like a cannibal.”
She threw away the last grain, and was silent. But suddenly Claude spoke.
“Miss Haddon,” he said, and his voice had never sounded so boyish to her before, “you have been laughing at me for nearly a week.” He paused, then he went on, rather unevenly, in the up-and-down tones induced by stifled excitement, “and I have never found it out until this moment. I suppose you think me a great fool. I daresay I have been one. But please don't—I mean, please let us give up acting our farce.”
“But have we reached the third act?” she said.
They were walking through the garden, among the crocuses and violets now.
“I am sure I don't know,” he answered, trying to seem easy. “Perhaps it is a farce in one act.”
“Perhaps it is not a farce at all, my dear boy,” she said very gently and with a sudden old-world gravity that was not without its grace.
They reached the house. She put her basket down on the oak table in the wide hall, and faced him in the eager way that was natural to her, and that was so youthful.
“Mr Melville—Claude,” she said, as she held out her hand, clad in a very countrified brown glove, with a fan-like gauntlet, “of all Jimmy's friends I think I shall like you the best. People who have acted together ought to be good comrades.”