“So have I,” said Eve; “but, like yourself, I have no experience.”
“What d’you say?”
“If I stretched out my littlest toe I should bump it against the partition wall. That would be very sad, wouldn’t it?”
Uncle Clem stopped short.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember our wedding talk?”
“Remember it!”
He began to walk very fast, so fast that she could scarcely keep pace with him. At last he jerked out the question:
“That travesty holds good, then? That’s why, on the night of his success, you’re walking home alone ’stead of feasting at a top-notch restaurant. Good God! And I’ve been shaking hands with myself these four hours past that my gloomy forebodings hadn’t come true—but, damn it! they have.”
“No,” exclaimed Eve, “you mustn’t say that; it isn’t so.”