"Seraph, if you talk like that we shall quarrel now."
"But it's true."
"There'd be nothing more in life?"
"Not if we quarrelled and never made it up."
"But if we did——"
"Ah, that'ud make all the difference in the world."
For a moment they looked into each other's eyes: then Sylvia's fell.
"I don't want to quarrel," she said. "I don't believe we shall, I don't see why we need. If we do, I'm prepared to make it up."
"I wonder if you will be when the time comes," he answered.
We were, with a single, noteworthy exception—a subdued party that night at dinner. Philip and Gladys had much to occupy their minds and little their tongues: Sylvia and the Seraph were silent and reflective: I, too, in my unobtrusive middle-aged fashion, had passed an eventful night and morning. The exception was Robin, who furnished conversational relief in the form of Stone Age pleasantries at the expense of his brother in particular, engaged couples in general, and the whole immemorial institution of wedlock. I have forgotten some of his more striking parallels, but I recollect that each fresh dish called forth a new simile.