"Well, it was just what I said to you a while ago--that I didn't know
any men ever talked like that except in books by Hichens or
Chambers--why do you suppose they're both named Robert?--and he went
perfectly purple with rage and said I was a savage. And then he got
madder still and said he'd like to be a savage himself for about five
minutes; and I wanted to tell him to go ahead and try, and see what
happened, but I didn't. I asked him how he wanted his tea, and he didn't
want it at all, and went away."

As she finished, she glanced up into his face for a hardly-needed
reassurance that the episode looked to him, as it had looked to her,
trivial. Then, with a contented little sigh, for his look gave her just
what she wanted, she sat up and slid her arms around his neck.

"How plumb ridiculous it would have been," she said, "if either of us
had married anybody else."

If Rodney, that is, had married a girl who'd have taken Bertram Willis
seriously; or if she had married a man capable of thinking the
architect's attentions important.




CHAPTER II

THE FIRST QUESTION AND AN ANSWER TO IT