Page:Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton 1922).djvu/40

30 She continued to look at him wonderingly. "I don't see what there is to be solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy's either you may be sure he got them out of some bounder. And there's nothing he'd hate more than to have them passed on to another."

"Nonsense. If they're not Streffy's they're much less mine. Hand them over, please, dear."

"Just as you like. But it does seem a waste; and, of course, the other people will never have one of them.  The gardener and Giulietta's lover will see to that!"

Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslin from which she emerged like a rosy Nereid. "How many boxes of them are left?"

"Only four."

"Unpack them, please."

Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge that Lansing had time for an exasperated sense of the disproportion between his anger and its cause. And this made him still angrier.

She held out a box. "The others are in your suit-case downstairs. It's locked and strapped."

"Give me the key, then."

"We might send them back from Venice, mightn't we? That lock is so nasty: it will take you half an hour."

"Give me the key, please." She gave it.

He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allotted half-hour, under the puzzled eyes