He snapped his cigarette case.
“Darn it, Honora, you're getting too deep for me!” he exclaimed. “You never liked those, Browning women down at Rivington, but if this isn't browning I'm hanged if I know what it is. An attack of nerves, perhaps. They tell me that women go all to pieces nowadays over nothing at all.”
“That's just it,” she agreed, “nothing at all!”
“I thought as much,” he replied, eager to seize this opportunity of ending a conversation that had neither head nor tail, and yet was marvellously uncomfortable. “There! be a good girl, and forget it.”
He stooped down suddenly to her face to kiss her, but she turned her face in time to receive the caress on the cheek.
“The panacea!” she said.
He laughed a little, boyishly, as he stood looking down at her.
“Sometimes I can't make you out,” he said. “You've changed a good deal since I married you.”
She was silent. But the thought occurred to her that a complete absorption in commercialism was not developing.
“If you can manage it, Honora,” he added with an attempt at lightness, “I wish you'd have a little dinner soon, and ask Brent. Will you?”