and played something very tender—you know the sort of thing—a fragment, a thought, a tear—and then gazed some more at Connie and that was the end of it. I sat there feeling proud all the time. Proprietary, I suppose you'd call it. Something like this: 'You like it? Good. Oh, yes, in a way he's one of the family. Fellow my aunt ran off with. Quite one of the family.'"
"How absurd you are, Noel!" laughed Madame Claire.
"And then what happened?" asked Eric.
"Well, we got out finally and headed for home. Connie hung on my arm like a wilted flower, and I can tell you, she's no light weight. I couldn't possibly put her in a 'bus in the state she was in—I have some sense of the fitness of things—so we took a taxi and she sat in it with her hands clasped and her eyes fixed before her, murmuring, 'Wasn't he divine, divine!' I felt that the situation was becoming a bit too tense, so I said, 'Yes, he's all right, but I think Grock's more amusing.' But it didn't annoy her a bit. She just kept on rocking herself and murmuring, 'Divine, divine!'"
"Did you leave her in that state?" Eric inquired.
"Oh, she won't recover for several days. When we got back to the hotel she thanked me as if I'd
