He was roused from them by a species of exclamation or cry almost at his elbow, and turned to find that the spectacular Miss Silverton was standing beside him. Her dubious hair gleamed in the sunlight, and one of the criticised eyes was screwed up. The other gazed at Archie with an expression of appeal.
“There’s something in my eye,” she said.
“No, really!”
“I wonder if you would mind? It would be so kind of you!”
Archie would have preferred to remove himself, but no man worthy of the name can decline to come to the rescue of womanhood in distress. To twist the lady’s upper lid back and peer into it and jab at it with the corner of his handkerchief was the only course open to him. His conduct may be classed as not merely blameless but definitely praiseworthy. King Arthur’s knights used to do this sort of thing all the time, and look what people think of them. Lucille, therefore, coming out of the hotel just as the operation was concluded, ought not to have felt the annoyance she did. But, of course, there is a certain superficial intimacy about the attitude of a man who is taking a fly out of a woman’s eye which may excusably jar upon the sensibilities of his wife. It is an attitude which suggests a sort of rapprochement or camaraderie or, as Archie would have put it, what not.
“Thanks so much!” said Miss Silverton.
“Oh no, rather not,” said Archie.
“Such a nuisance getting things in your eye.”
“Absolutely!”
“I’m always doing it!”
“Rotten luck!”
“But I don’t often find anyone as clever as you to help me.”
Lucille felt called upon to break in on this feast of reason and flow of soul.
“Archie,” she said, “if you go and get your clubs now, I shall just have time to walk round with you before my train goes.”
“Oh, ah!” said Archie, perceiving her for the first time. “Oh, ah, yes, right-o, yes, yes, yes!”
On the way to the first tee it seemed to Archie that Lucille was distrait and abstracted in her manner; and it occurred to him, not for the first time in his life, what a poor support a clear conscience is in moments of crisis. Dash it all, he didn’t see what else he could have done. Couldn’t leave the poor female staggering about the place with squads of flies wedged in her eyeball. Nevertheless–
“Rotten thing getting a fly in your eye,” he hazarded at length. “Dashed awkward, I mean.”
“Or convenient.”
“Eh?”
“Well, it’s a very good way of dispensing with an introduction.”
“Oh, I say! You don’t mean you think–”
“She’s a horrid woman!”
“Absolutely! Can’t think what people see in her.”
“Well, you seemed to enjoy fussing over her!”
“No, no! Nothing of the kind! She inspired me with absolute what- d’you-call-it–the sort of thing chappies do get inspired with, you know.”
“You were beaming all over your face.”
“I wasn’t. I was just screwing up my face because the sun was in my eye.”
“All sorts of things seem to be in people’s eyes this morning!”
Archie was saddened. That this sort of misunderstanding should have occurred on such a topping day and at a moment when they were to be torn asunder for about thirty-six hours made him feel–well, it gave him the pip. He had an idea that there were words which would have straightened everything out, but he was not an eloquent young man and could not find them. He felt aggrieved. Lucille, he considered, ought to have known that he was immune as regarded females with flashing eyes and experimentally-coloured hair. Why, dash it, he could have extracted flies from the eyes of Cleopatra with one hand and Helen of Troy with the other, simultaneously, without giving them a second thought. It was in depressed mood that he played a listless nine holes; nor had life brightened for him when he came back to the hotel two hours later, after seeing Lucille off in the train to New York. Never till now had they had anything remotely resembling a quarrel. Life, Archie felt, was a bit of a wash-out. He was disturbed and jumpy, and the sight of Miss Silverton, talking to somebody on a settee in the corner of the hotel lobby, sent him shooting off at right angles and brought him up with a bump against the desk behind which the room-clerk sat.