Skin and Other Stories

'Of course. Why not?'

'Here! No! Wait a minute, Pamela ...' but she came swiftly across the room, right up close to me where I was standing, and she dropped her head and looked down at me - the old look of a smile that wasn't a smile, at the corners of the mouth, and the curl of the nose, and the big full grey eyes staring at me with their bright black centres, and then they were grey, and all the rest was white flecked with hundreds of tiny red veins - and when she looked at me like this, hard and close, I swear to you it made me feel as though I were drowning.

'Yes,' she said. 'Why not?'

'But Pamela ... Good heavens ... No ... After all ...'

'Arthur, I do wish you wouldn't argue with me all the time. That's exactly what we'll do. Now, go fetch a deck of cards; we'll start right away.'