THE CONFIDANTE
"I suppose I am becoming quite insufferable. I have been making perfectly unjustifiable demands on your sympathy and patience and—imagination. I am an egotistical brute, I daresay. Of course there is not the slightest reason why you———" His indulgence intimated that there was, on the contrary, every reason why she should. . . . "I felt a bit jarred just now," he excused himself, with simple pathos.
"I never meant, a bit———" resumed Penelope.
"I know, I know," said Maurice, all magnanimity. The sickly sweetness of this reconciliation overpowered her.
"What a pair of fools we are!" she cried hysterically. "Maurice, dear, we're wearing this thing thin. I'm afraid I've been doing gallery to you and Veronica for the last six months, and you've both played up to me magnificently. But———"
"Veronica———" protested Maurice.
"Oh, yes, Veronica comes here too. She comes and sits for hours over there, just where you are now. There's not an aspect of your emotional relationship that we've not
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