She turned on me in a fury. "How dare you insinuate such a thing?"
"You've not come to Royat for the sake of my beautiful eyes."
"I'm under no obligation to tell you why I've come to Royat. Let us say my liver's out of order."
"Then my dear," said I, "you have come to the wrong place to cure it."
She glanced at me wrathfully, took out a cigarette, waved away with an unfriendly gesture the briquette I had drawn from my pocket, and struck one of her own matches. There fell a silence, during which I sat back in my chair, my arms on the elbow and my fingers' tips joined together, and assumed an air of philosophic meditation.
Presently she said: "There are times, Tony, when I should like to kill you."
"I am glad," said I, "to note the resumption of human relations."
"You are always so pragmatically and priggishly correct," she said.
"My dear," said I, "if you want me to sympathize with you in this impossible situation, I'll do it with all my heart. But don't round on me for either bringing it about or not preventing it."
"I was anxious to know something about Andrew Lackaday--I don't care whether you think me a fool or not"--she was still angry and defiant--"I wrote you pointedly. You did not answer my letter. I wrote again reminding you of your lack of courtesy. You replied like a pretty fellow in a morning coat at the Foreign Office and urbanely ignored my point."