I can't wait to tell you! so this goes round to you by messenger. You couldn't guess it out in a lifetime. I am rich, truly rich! Uncle Obed has died. He was a miser, God bless him! and he's left it all to me. Did you ever hear of anything so absurd? Now I can buy myself elegant leisure, as if it were something to be found at the shops. I can give myself time to write my plays. I can even bring them out. Of course, though I lead the horse to water I can't make him drink; and though I were Midas I can't force the public to listen. Stay! is it impossible? Go to! there shall be souvenir nights, and the newspapers shall be fully primed. Actresses shall pose as injured wives, and scandals shall be described in flaming headlines. All print is open to us. We are rich, rich! I'm quite delirious with it.
Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose
Love,—You bewilder me. I didn't know you cared. Money? I didn't know you wanted it. I believe we have a great deal. My father told me I need not stint. Don't use yours. Please don't use it. Marry me to-morrow, and take mine.
Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
Don't use it? Why, I want to use it! You might as well ask a new-crowned king to go and make a visit in central Africa, and pick up all the gold he could carry. Be patient. I'll come to Africa by and by. But just now I want to take mine ease in the opulence of my mind. I'm having a new dress made of a queer dull green and blue, and I'll buy a set of turquoises, God wot, and present them to myself from my dearest friend. Uncle Obed lived and died in South America. I won't wear mourning—I won't! I won't! Perhaps green and blue are mourning there.
Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose
Dearest lady,—Will you write me—just a word, only a word? You see I could not get a whisper from you last night, and you were so brilliant and sparkling, like a shining gem. Call me a baby, if you like. I don't mind. Only say you love me. Just the three words, dear? And will you take these little blue stones? I can see how they would look against your skin; I held them near a pinkish rose, and then I saw you in my mind and I threw the rose aside. Dear, the three words? I feel very humble, very much of a beggar. Will you?
Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
Now you are not sleeping, as I said when I saw the hollows coming under your eyes, or you wouldn't fail in tact. It isn't like you. I want to buy my turquoises myself. Don't you see how I am luxuriating in the sense of unfamiliar power? It will pass, and then I'll take your gift. Of course—the three words—of course; but I can't be always writing them. They look so bathetic. Now I've seemed brutal and ill-tempered, all in one letter. But why will you be faultless and appealing, and why won't you see I am a child of the earth (the street-earth—paving-stones ground up and mixed with champagne) and go home to your birds and trees?
Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume