“That’s bad—bad and crude. The good match is, with me, the accessory; therein lies my difference, and you know it. You know I am not like other girls. You saw it in London. You saw,” Camelia added, wrinkling up her nose in a self-mockery that robbed the coming remark of fatuity, “that I was a personage there.”
“As a noticeably pretty girl is a personage. You really are beating your drum rather deafeningly, Camelia.”
“Yes; I’ll shock you by mere noise. But, Alceste, I am not as conceited as I seem; no, really, I am not,” and with her change of tone her look became humorously grave. “I know very well that the people who make much of me—who think me a personage—are sillies. Still, in a world of sillies, I am a personage. It does come round to that, you see.”
“Yes; I see.”
Camelia leaned back in her end of the little sofa, her arms folded, her head bent in a light scrutiny of her companion’s face. The warm quiet of the summer day pervaded the peaceful room, a room with so many associations for both of them. They had studied, read there together for years; laughed, quarrelled, been the best of friends and the fondest of enemies. Perior, as he looked about it, could call up a long vista of Camelias, all gay, all attaching, all evasive, all culminating and fulfilling themselves with an almost mathematical inevitableness, as was now so apparent to him, in the long, slim “personage” beside him, her eyes, as he knew, studying him, her mind amused with conjectures as to what he really thought of her, she herself quite ready to display the utmost sincerity in the attempt to elicit that thought. Oh no, Camelia would keep up very few pretences with him. Perior, gazing placidly enough at the sunlit green outside the morning-room, knew very well what he thought of her.
“Are you estimating the full extent of my folly,” she asked presently, “tempering your verdict by the consideration of extenuations?”
This was so apt an exposition of his mental process that Perior smiled rather helplessly.
“See,” she said, rising and going to the writing-table, “I’ll help you to leniency; show you some very evident extenuations.” From a large bundle of letters she selected two. “Weigh the extent of my influence, and find it funny, if you like, as I do.”
“I wonder if you quite realize the ludicrous aspect of our conversation,” said Perior, taking a thick sheaf of paper from the first letter.
“Quite—quite. Only you push me to extremes. I must make you own my importance—my individuality.”