And his flurry included a certain crossness and impatience with Amory. She was--could be--only pretending. She knew perfectly well that there was nothing really. The least exercise of her imagination must have told her that to press Britomart Belchamber's hand, for example, was the most innocent of creature-comforts. Why, he had pressed it with Amory herself there; he had said, jokingly, and Amory had heard him, that it was a desirable hand to press, and he had pressed it. And so with Britomart's dancing of "Rufty Tufty." Amory, who, like Cosimo, had had an artist's training, ought to be the last person to deny that any eye so trained did not see a hundred beauties where eyes uneducated saw one only. And that of course meant chaste beauties. Such admiration was an exercise in analysis, not in amorousness.... No, it was far more likely that Amory was getting at him. She was smiling, a melancholy and indifferent little smile, at the asbestos log. She had no right to smile like that. It made him feel beastly. It made him so that he didn't know what to say.... But she continued to smile, and when Cosimo did at last speak he hated himself for stammering. "But--but--but--oh, come, Amory, this _is_ absurd! You're--you're tired! Me and Britomart! Oh, c-c-come!----" And then it occurred to him that this was a ridiculous answer, and that the proper answer to have made would have been simply to laugh. He did laugh. "Ha, ha, ha! By Jove, for the moment you almost took me in! You really did get a rise out of me that time! Congratulations.--And I admit it is rather cool of Walter to pounce on the first name that occurs to him and make use of it in that way. Deuced cool when you come to think of it. It seems to me----" But again that quite calm and unreproaching look silenced him. There was a loftiness and serenity about it that reminded him of the Amory of four or five years before. And she spoke almost with a note of wonder at him in her tone. "My dear Cosimo," she said very patiently, "what is the matter? You look at me as if I had accused you of something. Nothing was further from my thoughts. I suppose, when you examine it, it's a matter for congratulation, not accusation at all. As Walter said, I don't want to fly at anybody's eyes. We foresaw this, and provided for it, you know." At this cool taking for granted of a preposterous thing Cosimo's stammer became a splutter.--"But--but--but--," he broke out: but Amory held up her hand. "I raise no objection. I've no right to. What earthly right have I, when I concurred before ever we were married?" "Concurred!... My dear girl, concurred in what? Really this is the most ridiculous situation I was ever in!" Amory raised her brows.--"Oh?... I don't see anything ridiculous about it. It received my sanction when Britomart stopped in the house, and I haven't changed my mind. As I say, we foresaw it, and provided for it."