"Oh!" he said, "I was just wandering about."
"I'll go straight upstairs," she said, trying to be as matter-of-fact as her Arthur appeared to be.
When he had leisurely set the whole of the ground-floor to rights, he followed her. She was waiting for him in the boudoir. She had removed her hat and mantle, and lighted one of the new radiators, and was sitting on the sofa.
"There came a telegram from Charlie," she began. "I was crossing the hall just as the boy reached the door. So I opened the door myself. It was from Charlie to say that he would be at the Grand Babylon Hotel to-night."
"Charlie! The Grand Babylon!... Not Buckingham Palace." Eve ignored his crude jocularity.
"It seems I ought to have received it early in the afternoon. I was so puzzled I didn't know what to do--I just put my things on and went off to the hotel at once. It wasn't till after I was in the taxi that I remembered I ought to have told the servants where I was going. That's why I hurried back. I wanted to get back before you did. Charlie suggested telephoning from the hotel, but I wouldn't let him on any account."
"Well, I thought you might be upset and wonder what on earth was going on."
"What was going on?" Mr. Prohack repeated, gazing at her childlike maternal serious face, whose wistfulness affected him in an extraordinary way. "What on earth are you insinuating?"
No! It was inconceivable that this pulsating girl perched on the sofa should be the mother of the mature and independent Charles.
"Charlie's _staying_ at the Grand Babylon Hotel," said Eve, as though she were saying that Charlie had forged a cheque or blown up the Cenotaph.
Even the imperturbable man of the world in front of her momentarily blenched at the news.
"Yes, and he's got a bedroom and a private sitting-room and a bathroom, and a room for a secretary--"
"Yes, and a secretary. And he dictates things to the secretary all the time, and the telephone's always going,--yes, even at this time of night. He must be spending enormous sums. So of course I hurried back to tell you."
"You did quite right, my pet," said Mr. Prohack. "A good wife should share these tit-bits with her husband at the earliest possible moment."
He was really very like what in his more conventional moments he would have said a woman was like. If Eve had taken the affair lightly he would without doubt have remonstrated, explaining that such an affair ought by no means to be taken lightly. But seeing that she took it very seriously, his instinct was to laugh at it, though in fact he was himself extremely perturbed by this piece of news, which confirmed, a hundredfold and in the most startling manner, certain sinister impressions of his own concerning Charlie's deeds in Glasgow. And he assumed the gay attitude, not from a desire to reassure his wife, but from mere contrariness. Positively the strangest husband that ever lived, and entirely different from normal husbands!