“I am fond of them,” she answered, “but they are not everything to me. They don’t fill up my whole time and all my thoughts. They won’t do instead of you.”
“No one suggested that, I think. Have you been for a drive to-day?”
“No—I haven’t.”
“What a funny woman you are, Mary! You might as well not have a motor for all the use you make of it.”
“I had nowhere to go.”
He looked at some invitation cards on the mantelpiece. “Oh, my dear, that’s absolute nonsense. You mean you don’t care to go anywhere. It is extraordinary, how you drop people, Mary! When we first came to this house we had a lot of parties and things. Now you never seem to care for them.”
“It’s quite true,” she answered. “We did have parties and things. They made me miserable. I hated them.”
“Rather odd; aren’t you?”
“I hated them and loathed them,” she continued. “For it only meant there were crowds of women who tried to flirt with you.”
“That’s an idée fixe of yours, my dear. Pure fancy, you know.”