"Was it too swell?"
"She said so. Well!—you shall see the photographs, and judge for yourself."
But the conversation had fallen flat. A chill had come. Even the discovery that the moon had risen when we were not looking did nothing to remove it. We were not young enough, probably, or not old enough, for lunar influences. Indifference to Phœbe begins with maturity, and even outlasts it. So thought Mr. Challis, when rather mechanically called on to admire the silver disc, shot with gold, just getting clear of a purple gloom that was the hallowed smoke of unholy Grime—hallowed by the sun's last word to twilight, its heir-at-law and sole executor. For all that, Mr. Challis made notes in this connection for literary purposes, while Judith thought to herself that this would never do. She must make an effort, or the skein she was going to twist round her finger would float away and be lost.
"I know I shocked you just now," said she.
"Shocked me?—when?"
"Just before we got to the photography...."
"I have quite forgotten. What were we saying?" This was not true; he remembered perfectly.
"How kind of you to pretend to forget! Forgive my disbelieving you."
Challis was open to a recrudescence of veracity. Perhaps it was a fib this time—he made the admission. But as he made it, he was again conscious of the soul-brush at work. Had he perceived the skein-analogy, he might have recognized its first clip round the finger. "We were talking of the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, I think," said he. "But why you think you shocked me I can't imagine."
"Never mind!—if you don't recollect. But Sibyl would have lectured me. She always says I ridicule Moral Law. Perhaps I do, in a certain sense. But Sibyl is the soul of propriety."