That, you know, is what you've never quite done." He gave out a murmur of discomfort which produced in him a change of position, and the sequel to the change was that he presently accepted from his cushioned angle of the sofa the definite support it could offer.

If his eyes moreover had not met his companion's they had been brought by the hand he repeatedly and somewhat distressfully passed over them closer to the question of which of the alien objects presented to his choice it would cost him least to profess to handle.

What he had already paid, a spectator would easily have gathered from the long, the suppressed wriggle that had ended in his falling back, was some sacrifice of his habit of not privately depreciating those to whom he was publicly civil.

It was plain, however, that when he presently spoke his thought had taken a stretch.

"I'm sure I've fully intended to be everything that's proper.