Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/977

Godfrey smokes furiously

[She turns the chairs slightly so that they face each other, and then places her work-box on the table, and sits down in sewing-chair. Godfrey puts a hassock under her feet, and adds a jar of tobacco and some pipes to the work-table.

Godfrey (sitting down in reading-chair). That is more like it, I think. May I smoke?

[She nods, and he fills a pipe.

Eve. Really you have a remarkable memory—for trifles. Why, there is Les Misérables still on your reading-desk. Where was it that we left off?

Godfrey. Book the Fourth and in the middle of a chapter. See, there is the marker.

Eve (indifferently). Ah, yes. By the way, I never finished it. Did you find the continuation interesting ?

Godfrey (absently). I don't remember—no, I think not. I am afraid that I have grown tired of Hugo. And then Jean Valjean is so amiable and long-suffering—he wearies me.

Eve. Yes.

[A pause. Eve sits looking straight before her. Godfrey, lights his pipe.

Eve (looking up). Really, we are sitting here quite as if it were the most natural thing in the world. [With a yawn.] Heavens! How stupid it used to be!

Godfrey. Except when we had something to talk about.

"My dear, dear Children"