“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she said, “if you like it.”

“Never mind whether I like it or not.  It’s detestable. And the drawing-room?”

She did not answer.  I think she was ashamed of herself.

“Even more so, I suppose.  And—­your boudoir?”

(I’ve forgotten the boudoir.  She hardly ever let any of us go into it.  It was pretty awful.)

“I do wish,” she said, “you’d leave me alone.  What does it matter?”

“Your boudoir,” he went on, as if she hadn’t said anything, “is, if possible, more detestable than the drawing-room.”

“I never said so.”

“Precisely.  That’s my grievance.  Why, in Heaven’s name, didn’t you say so?  Why did you tell me that you liked all these abominations?”

“Because they didn’t matter.”

“Why lie about them if they didn’t matter?”

“I mean they didn’t matter to me.  They don’t.”

“My dear child, what on earth do you suppose they matter to me?  What made you think they mattered?”

“The way you went on about them.”

“Oh—­the way I go on—­Well, if that matters—­”

She rose.  I think she had heard the tinkle of the coffee-cups in the corridor and wanted to put an end to what in any hands but Jimmy’s would have been an unseemly altercation.

“Will it matter if we go upstairs?”

“No.  Not a bit.”  He snapped and twinkled at the same time.

She went, and Norah followed her.

Jevons settled himself in an armchair.  I saw how unperturbed and deliberate he was as he took his coffee from the tray, and with what an incorrigible air he jerked his thumb towards the staircase.  I can still hear him call up the staircase in a magisterial voice, “The ladies are in the study, Parker.”  When we were alone he fell into meditation.

It was apparently as the result of meditation that he said, “I suppose it is a bit crude, if you come to think of it.  Only why couldn’t she say so at the time?”

I said I supposed she was afraid of hurting his feelings.

“My feelings?  How could I have any feelings about a blanketty drawing-room suite?  Does she really think I’m such a fool that I can’t live without lions on my staircase?  I stuck the beastly things there because I thought she’d like ’em.  If I thought she’d like a tame rhinoceros in her boudoir I’d have got her one, if I’d ’ad to go out and catch ’im and train ’im myself.  If I thought now that the only way to preserve her affection was to wear that suit of armour every night at dinner I’d wear it and glory in wearing it.  There isn’t any damned silly thing I wouldn’t do and glory in.”

And then—­“Her nerves must be in an awful state.”

He meditated again.

“Tell you what—­I’ll get rid of this place.  I’ll let it go furnished for what it’ll fetch.  I’ll only keep the things we had before—­the things she liked.  They are prettier.”