“Well, Nancy,” said he, “are you going to read to me?”

(Better to read than talk.)

“Not now,” said she.  “I want to talk to you.”

He saw that it was not to be avoided.  “Won’t you let me have my coffee and a cigarette first?”

She waited, silent, with a strained air of patience more uncomfortable than words.

“Well,” said he, lighting a second cigarette, and settling in the position that would best enable him to bear it, “out with it, and get it over.”

“I want to know,” said she, “what you are going to do.”

“To do?” He was genuinely bewildered.

“Yes, to do.”

“But about what?”

“About that woman.”

He was so charmed with the angelic absurdity of the question that he paused while he took it in, smiling.

“I can’t see,” he said presently, “that I’m called upon to take action.  Why should I?”

She drew herself up proudly.

“For my sake.”

He was instantly grave.  “For your sake, dear, I would do a great deal.  But”—­he smiled again—­“what action should I take?”

“Is it for me to say?”

“Well, I hardly know.  I should be glad, at any rate, if you’d make a suggestion.  I can’t, for instance, get up and turn the lady out of her own sister’s house.  Do you want me to do that?  Would you like me to—­to take her away in a cab?”

There was a long silence, so awful that he forced himself to speak.  “I am extremely sorry.  It was, of course, outrageous that you should have had to sit in the same room with her for five minutes.  But what could I do?”

“You could have taken me away.”

“I did, as soon as I got the chance.”

“Not before you had”—­she paused for her phrase—­“condoned her appearance.”

“Condoned her appearance?  How?”

“By your whole manner to her.”

“Would you have had me uncivil?”

“There are degrees,” said she, “between incivility and marked attention.”

He coloured.  “Marked attention!  There was nothing marked about it.  What could I do?  Would you, I say, have had me turn my back on the unfortunate woman?  That would have been marked attention, if you like.”

“I don’t know what I would have had you do.  One has no rules beforehand for inconceivable situations.  It was inconceivable that I should have met her as I did, in your friend’s house.  Inconceivable that I should meet such people anywhere.  What I do ask is that you will not let me be exposed in that way again.”

“That I certainly will not.  The Ransomes did their best to get her out of the room to-day.  They won’t annoy you.  I can’t conceive why they called—­except that they have always been rather fond of me.  You can’t hold people accountable for all the doings of all their relations, can you?”

“In this case I should say you could—­perfectly well.”