"Eve, you are a confounded liar, and you know it. You have never caused me a moment's unhappiness. You may annoy me. You may exasperate me. You are frequently unspeakable. But you have never made me unhappy. And why? Because I am one of the few exponents of romantic passion left in this city. My passion for you transcends my reason. I am a fool, but I am a magnificent fool. And the greatest miracle of modern times is that after twenty-four years of marriage you should be able to give me pleasure by perching your stout body on the arm of my chair as you are doing." "Arthur, I'm not stout." "Yes, you are. You're enormous. But hang it, I'm such a morbid fool I like you enormous." Mrs. Prohack, smiling mysteriously, remarked in a casual tone, as she looked at _The Daily Picture_: "Why _do_ people let their photographs get into the papers? It's awfully vulgar." "It is. But we're all vulgar to-day. Look at that!" He pointed to the page. "The granddaughter of a duke who refused the hand of a princess sells her name and her face to a firm of ship-owners who keep newspapers like their grandfathers kept pigeons.... But perhaps I'm only making a noise like a man of fifty." "You aren't fifty." "I'm five hundred. And this coffee is remarkably thin." "Let me taste it." "Yes, you'd rob me of my coffee now!" said Mr. Prohack, surrendering his cup. "Is it thin, or isn't it? I pride myself on living the higher life; my stomach is not my inexorable deity; but even on the mountain top which I inhabit there must be a limit to the thinness of the coffee." Eve (as he called her, after the mother and prototype of all women--her earthly name was Marian) sipped the coffee. She wrinkled her forehead and then glanced at him in trouble. "Yes, it's thin," she said. "But I've had to ration the cook. Oh, Arthur, I _am_ going to make you unhappy after all. It's impossible for me to manage any longer on the housekeeping allowance." "Why didn't you tell me before, child?" "I have told you 'before,'" said she. "If you hadn't happened to mention the coffee, I mightn't have said anything for another fortnight. You started to give me more money in June, and you said that was the utmost limit you could go to, and I believed it was. But it isn't enough. I hate to bother you, and I feel ashamed--" "That's ridiculous. Why should you feel ashamed?" "Well, I'm like that." "You're revelling in your own virtuousness, my girl. Now in last week's _Economist_ it said that the Index Number of commodity prices had slightly fallen these last few weeks." "I don't know anything about indexes and the _Economist_," Eve retorted. "But I know what coffee is a pound, and I know what the tradesmen's books are--" At this point she cried without warning. "No," murmured Mr. Prohack, soothingly, caressingly. "You mustn't baptise me. I couldn't bear it." And he kissed her eyes. III