?"

"How do you mean----well?"

"Make your report."

"What report?"

"Have you nothing to tell me about Angela?"

"Only that she's a blister."

I was concerned.

"Hasn't she come clustering round you yet?"

"She has not."

"Very odd."

"Why odd?"

"She must have noted your lack of appetite."

He barked raspingly, as if he were having trouble with the tonsils of the
soul.

"Lack of appetite! I'm as hollow as the Grand Canyon."

"Courage, Tuppy! Think of Gandhi."

"What about Gandhi?"

"He hasn't had a square meal for years."

"Nor have I. Or I could swear I hadn't. Gandhi, my left foot."

I saw that it might be best to let the Gandhi _motif_ slide. I went back
to where we had started.

"She's probably looking for you now."

"Who is? Angela?"

"Yes. She must have noticed your supreme sacrifice."

"I don't suppose she noticed it at all, the little fathead. I'll bet it
didn't register in any way whatsoever."

"Come, Tuppy," I urged, "this is morbid. Don't take this gloomy view. She
must at least have spotted that you refused those _nonnettes de poulet
Agnes Sorel_. It was a sensational renunciation and stuck out like a sore
thumb. And the _cepes a la Rossini_----"

A hoarse cry broke from his twisted lips:

"Will you stop it, Bertie! Do you think I am made of marble? Isn't it bad
enough to have sat watching one of Anatole's supremest dinners flit by,
course after course, without having you making a song about it? Don't
remind me of those _nonnettes_. I can't stand it."

I endeavoured to hearten and console.

"Be brave, Tuppy. Fix your thoughts on that cold steak-and-kidney pie in
the larder. As the Good Book says, it cometh in the morning."

"Yes, in the morning. And it's now about half-past nine at night. You
would bring that pie up, wouldn't you? Just when I was trying to keep my
mind off it."

I saw what he meant. Hours must pass before he could dig into that pie.
I dropped the subject, and we sat for a pretty good time in silence. Then
he rose and began to pace the room in an overwrought sort of way, like a
zoo lion who has heard the dinner-gong go and is hoping the keeper won't
forget him in the general distribution. I averted my gaze tactfully, but
I could hear him kicking chairs and things. It was plain that the man's
soul was in travail and his blood pressure high.

Presently he returned to his seat, and I saw that he was looking at me
intently. There was that about his deme