"Confound you! do be careful!" I muttered, picking it up, and noticing the great blur it left on the page. "The sheets are wet."
"It doesn't matter, they're not a new pair!" answered Howard, coolly, going down on his knees to light up the fire. He accomplished this in a few minutes, and then settled down in the long chair with a cigar. I wrote on feverishly, expecting to be addressed and interrupted every moment. It was a great bore his coming in just now, disturbing me. I had a difficult thing to express, and I was just pursuing the tail end of an idea I could not quite grasp. My pen hovered uncertainly over the paper. I could not exactly give words to the impression in my brain, and the sense that he was going to speak, about to speak each second, worried me. At the same time I never wished to be ungracious to Howard when he did return to our rooms; never wished to feel it was my execrably bad company that induced him to stay away from them all night instead of half.
"I say, Vic!"
"Well?"
"Do you know that kissing song Embrasse moi?"
I nodded.
"Don't you think it awfully fetching? I like that refrain so much—Embrasse moi, chumph! chumph!—and then the orchestra exactly imitates the sound of a kiss—then Encore une fois!! chumph! chumph! Don't you?"
"Yes; it isn't bad."
Silence.
"Victor!"