Nora looked at her companion with a frown. She had been looking for his coming, and now when he was here, he had nothing to say.
“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded suddenly.
“I’m wondering where Steven is,” he returned anxiously. “A blow-out oughtn’t to keep him all this time.”
“But what makes you jump so?” she insisted. “You never used to be like this. Is it St. Vitus’s dance?”
He turned to her with an assumption of freedom from care.
“I am a bit nervous, Nora,” he admitted. “You see, Steven and I are in a big deal together, and, er, the markets go up and down like the temperature and it keeps me sorts of anxious.”
“You don’t mean to say you’ve gone into business?” she said.
“Not exactly,” he prevaricated, “and yet I have in a way. It’s something secret.”
“Well,” said Nora, with sound common sense, “if it frightens you so, why go in for it?”
“Well, everything was kind of tepid in Paris,” he explained.