After reading her letter I concentrated my thoughts on the question how to blot out time, annihilate space, bridge two continents, and bring two proud, sore, sensitive spirits into communion. My method of attaining concentration of mind is to think of something different and wait for inspiration to solve my original problem. Joyce may remember the day when I stumped into her room and talked at large of honeymoons and winter resorts. That was the time when my mind was concentrated on the problem of Sylvia and the Seraph. She will further recollect assenting to my suggestion of a villa at Taormina.
On leaving her room I strolled round to the bank to see if they had agents in Sicily or could give me any information on the subject of a suitable villa. They were kind but helpless, and eventually I thought it the safer course to write for rooms at an hotel and look for a villa at our leisure. Ambling out of the bank, I wandered in the direction of the telegraph office.
Inspiration came in the interval between wiring for rooms and engaging berths on the Wagon-Lits--I knew it would. As soon as our places were booked I walked back to the telegraph office and cabled to the Seraph at Yokohama. "Letter and enclosures received with thanks," I wired. "All nonsense about not meeting again. Will you lunch Christmas Day, one-thirty? Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.--TOBY."
Joyce's first words were to tell me I had been away a very long time. Flattering as this was, I had to justify myself and account for every moment of my absence. She wanted to know what I had wired to the Seraph, and as husbands and wives _in posse_ should have no secrets from each other, I showed her the draft of my cable. Her face was a study.
"My dear!" she exclaimed, "we can't go all the way to New York even to see the Seraph. You suggested Taormina when you left here...."
"Why did you invite the Seraph to lunch with us there?"
She was not satisfied till I spelt out the draft of the cable word by word; and then she rather resented my remarks about the incurable sloppiness of the female mind. As a matter of fact, I cannot claim originality for the phrase; I believe a Liberal Prime Minister coined it as a terse description of his opponents' mental shortcomings. I only borrowed it for the nonce.