'They wore very low dresses,' said Bruce, who felt rather sleepy and stupid, and as if he didn't quite know what he was saying.
Madame Frabelle modestly looked away from the pictures.
He agreed, and they went out and sat, somewhat awkwardly, on an uncomfortable stone seat.
There was a delicious half-hour of real summer sun--'One of those April days that seem a forecast of June,' as Madame Frabelle said.
'How much better it is to be here in the beautiful fresh air than squeezed into a stuffy theatre,' remarked Bruce, who was really feeling a shade jealous of Edith for seeing the revue that he had wished to see.
'Yes, indeed. There's nothing like England, I think,' she said rather irrelevantly.
Her hand was on the edge of the seat. Somehow or other Bruce's had gone over it. She didn't appear to notice it.
'What small hands you have!' he remarked.
'Oh no! I take sixes,' said the lady, whose size was really three-quarters more than that.
He insisted on looking at the grey suède glove, and then examined her rings.
'I suppose these rings have--er--associations for you, Madame Frabelle?'
'Ah!' she said, shaking her head. 'This one--yes, this one--the sapphire recalls old memories.' She sighed; she had bought it in the Brompton Road.
'A present from your husband, I suppose?' said Bruce, with a tinge of bitterness.
She thought he was getting a little sentimental, too early in the day, and, with an effort at energy, she said:
They went back, and now Bruce began to show off his rowing powers. He had not practised for a long time, and didn't get along very quickly. She admired his athletic talents, as though he had been a winner of the Diamond Sculls.
'If I'd stuck to it, you know,' he said, rather apologetically, 'I'd have done well in the rowing line. At one time--a good while ago--I thought of going in for Henley, in the Regatta, you know. But with that beastly Foreign Office one can't keep up anything of that sort.'
'My muscle,' said Bruce, sticking out his arm, and hitting it rather hard, 'is fairly good, you know. Not bad for a London man who never has any practice.'
'My arm was about seventeen inches round just below the elbow at one time,' Bruce said, 'a few years ago.'
'Just fancy! Splendid!' said Madame Frabelle, who remembered that her waist was not much more a good while ago.