“Bravo!” said Oldmeadow. He felt as well as uttered it. She wasn’t being solemn, and she had returned his shuttlecock smartly. “But are there?” he went on. He had adjusted his eyeglass for a clearer confrontation of her.
Miss Toner’s large eyes, enlarged still further by the glass, met his, not solemnly, but with a considering gravity.
“You are a sceptic, Mr. Oldmeadow,” she observed. “A satirist. Do you find that satire and scepticism take you very far in reading human hearts?”
“There’s one for you, Roger!” cried Barney.
Oldmeadow kept his gaze fixed on Miss Toner. “You think that Ariane might prefer Infant Welfare work or Charity Organization to a love-story?”
“Not those necessarily.” She returned his gaze. “Though I have known very fine big people who did prefer them. But they are not the only alternatives to love-stories.”
“I am sceptical,” said Oldmeadow. “I am, if you like, satirical. I don’t believe there are any alternatives to love-stories; only palliatives to disappointment.”
Barney leaned forward: “Adrienne, you see, doesn’t accept that old-fashioned, sentimentalizing division of the sexes. She doesn’t accept the merely love-story, hearth-side rôle for women.”
“Oh, well,” Oldmeadow played with his fork, smiling with the wryness that accompanied his reluctant sincerities, “I don’t divide the sexes as far as love-stories are concerned. We are all in the same boat. For us, too, Barney, it’s love-story or palliative. You don’t agree? If you were disappointed in love? Hunting? Farming? Politics? Post-Impressionism? Would any of them fill the gap?”
It wasn’t at all the line he had intended the talk to take. He knew that as he glanced across at Nancy. Saying nothing, as if its subject could not concern her, and with a dim little smile, she listened, and he knew that for her, though she wouldn’t die of it, there would be only palliatives. If only Barney, confound him, hadn’t been so charming.