“What is the time?” The time? What cheek! He was almost startled.
He took his heavy watch out and presented its face to her ironically.
“Are you in a hurry?” he asked.
“No, I just wondered what the time was. I live so vaguely.”
“You are sure you are not in a hurry?”
“Oh, no!”
“I have a confession to make, my dear Bertha.” He had not put his watch back in his pocket. She had asked for the watch; he would use it. “I came here just now to test a funny mood—a quite new mood. My visit is a sort of trial trip of this mood. It was connected with you. I wanted to find out what it meant, and how it would be affected by your presence.”
Bertha looked up with mocking sulky face, a shade of hopeful curiosity.
“It was a feeling of complete indifference as regards yourself!”
He said this solemnly, with the pomp with which a weighty piece of news might be delivered by a solicitor in conversation with his client.