Barbara seemed to have talked away her listlessness. The champagne had brought colour into her cheeks and eyes. Eric looked at her with new interest, waiting for the next abrupt change.
"I'm not finding you as thoroughly dull as you warned me to expect," he observed, borrowing her candour of speech.
"I should think not! I'm never dull when it's worth while taking any trouble. I didn't think you were worth while, till you began talking. Then I saw that in spite of the play——"
"I didn't think I should be spared that," he murmured.
"And the poses——"
"Poses?"
"Oh, my dear child, you've postured and advertised yourself till every one's sick of you! A good press—I should think you had! You're never out of it! An announcement that you've left London—and the intolerable effrontery of telling us all about it! The only way you could escape from your mob of adorers."
"I don't think I used the word 'adorers'; and I've got to find time somehow to rehearse my new play."
His voice had grown a little stiff. Barbara smiled to herself and discovered suddenly that the desire to hurt him was dead.
"When's the new play coming out?" she asked.