[She is listening as he goes on and on, thinking despite herself that she might rather enjoy the challenge of finding such an intact selection of the skeleton—from where? Who knows. Under what circumstances? Inessential to the imagining—given how he makes it sound so much like piecing together a puzzle or choosing the right fabric for the making of a fashionable new shirt, two rather satisfying pastimes indeed.

Val laughs, and her smile flexes in answer and—

Wysteria actually hears what he has said, and the abject mortification of their current circumstances finally reaches her. She goes very still, and very hot up the back of her neck (which is invisible due to the indignity of her unpinned hair), and feels a piece of her wither and die with embarrassment. It is late, and of all the places Val de Foncé should be, her bedroom is not one of them regardless of the hour.

She hurriedly sets aside her pen again without having written anything since fetching it up.]

Yes, well. I agree that this has been more than revealing enough, thank you. Perhaps we should think over all of this business of skulls and bribery and so on again in the morning at a more reasonable hour. We might attend then to the question of where one might hope to find such a pristine artifact, for example.

—Time permitting, of course. There naturally being so much to accomplish for our other work.