"In fact it's an offence for me to mention her name."
"You haven't—yet," he observed tentatively.
And as she took this to be a challenge, she leaned back in her chair and said "Isabel Irish" with very little charity of inflexion.
"Please!" said Richard—but what he really meant was "Thank you." Inside himself he was thinking "Damn that fellow Doran! Why the blazes didn't he tell me about all these girls."
The sound of Auriole's voice brought him back to the necessity of the moment.
"So sans gene," she was saying, "so innocent—so unworldly. I wonder what her views would be if she learnt you had entertained a lady in your flat at midnight."
"As the lady came uninvited," Richard returned, "I am hardly likely to refer to the matter."
"Suppose I referred to it—advertised the fact. Do you imagine she would marry you then?"
Richard smiled.
"I should say she'd be as likely to marry me then as she is now."