“Fact.” Warner grinned back at him. “Well, naturally, when I realized the shocking state I was in, I set about to pry into the lady’s emotions. But malheureusement, I found she hadn’t any. That is, not for me. There were other men—oh, a disgusting lot of other men!—with whom she was shy, coquette, difficult—all the encouraging things, you know; but with me she remained always that frightful neutrality, one’s Platonic friend. So, things went; I mean, stood still. I went to the flat, and she came out to dine; and, ah, yes; a pretty touch I had almost forgotten—she always wore a tiny carved jade elephant hung on a fine gold chain about her neck. Lends a neat flavor of the artistic, that elephant, what?” He smiled at the little group whimsically. “Um-m; one night at the Savoy——”
“Ah! It was in London then?” The ugly old lady’s beautiful bright eyes betrayed what she thought of London. “You didn’t tell us that.”
“Of course—in London, five years ago last November. As I said, we were having supper at the Savoy, and she told me she called the elephant Jim. I thought it a crude joke, myself; but I let it pass.... I let it pass. He did me no end of good turns after all, that elephant: every time I was on the verge of insanity—blurting the thing, I mean, of course, and so losing her for a pal or anything—I seemed to catch that old beast’s green eye fixed on me—with the leeriest grin you ever saw. And I swore I’d never be as clumsy as he, no matter if our names were the same.
“Well, to get on to the tragedy”—Warner’s laugh rang out so delightfully clear that every one had to join in it; even Sheila, whose adorable butterfly face had been rather serious in its attention. “One dull afternoon I had dropped in to tea, as I did a shocking lot of rainy evenings, and found her in a blue frock—um-m—a delicious frock really—but blue and in a mood to match. After she’d made us each three very bad cups of tea—and she generally made very creditable tea, too, for a girl—I said: ‘Come, let’s have it! which of them is it—who’s bothering you?’
“For a minute she looked as though she’d like to box my ears—you know the kind of look, when you’ve just displayed a little perspicacity in some one’s else affairs; then ‘it’s the one who isn’t bothering me,’ she said, toying with the little elephant and looking at it in a peculiar sort of fashion. ‘The one who hasn’t the perception to bother me—or doesn’t want to,’ she added, in a rather lower voice.
“‘But who——?’ I began.
“‘Never mind’—— you know how girls are, the minute one begins to be useful; nothing women hate so much as usefulness. A practical man has absolutely no chance with ’em. ‘I’m absurd even to mention it to you. I hate rainy days—they always make one so absurd. Come, let’s try those new songs——’
“‘Not until you’ve told me——’
“‘What? I don’t intend to tell you anything,’ she declared—so firmly that I knew she would end by telling me everything.
“‘Oh, yes, you do,’ I said—with that disgusting urbanity which has made all my friends abhor me, more or less—‘yes, you do. First of all, what’s his name?’