“No. I'm badly rattled. Is it you, Sylvia?”
“Indeed it is. I am in my own room. I—I thought—”
“Yes, I am listening.”
“I don't know what I did think. Is it necessary for me to telephone you a minute account of the mental processes which ended by my calling you up—out of the vasty deep?”
The old ring in her voice hinting of the laughing undertone, the same trailing sweetness of inflection—could he doubt his senses any longer?
“I know you, now,” he said.
“I should think you might. I should very much like to know how you are—if you don't mind saying?”
“Thank you. I seem to be all right. Are you all right, Sylvia?”
“Shamefully and outrageously well. What a season, too! Everybody else is in rags—make-up rags! Isn't that a disagreeable remark? But I'll come to the paint-brush too, of course.... We all do. Doesn't anybody ever see you any more?”
She heard him laugh to himself unpleasantly; then: “Does anybody want to?”