JACK. [Angrily.] Well, why did you send me there? One must do as
other fellows do. It's such nonsense, I mean, to call it being
drunk. Of course I 'm awfully sorry. I 've had such a beastly
headache all day.

BARTHWICK. Tcha! If you'd only had the common decency to remember
what happened when you came in. Then we should know what truth
there was in what this fellow says--as it is, it's all the most
confounded darkness.

JACK. [Staring as though at half-formed visions.] I just get a--
and then--it 's gone----

MRS. BARTHWICK. Oh, Jack! do you mean to say you were so tipsy you
can't even remember----

JACK. Look here, Mother! Of course I remember I came--I must have
come----

BARTHWICK. [Unguardedly, and walking up and down.] Tcha!--and that
infernal purse! Good Heavens! It'll get into the papers. Who on
earth could have foreseen a thing like this? Better to have lost a
dozen cigarette-boxes, and said nothing about it. [To his wife.]
It's all your doing. I told you so from the first. I wish to
goodness Roper would come!

MRS. BARTHWICK. [Sharply.] I don't know what you're talking about,
John.

BARTHWICK. [Turning on her.] No, you--you--you don't know