"I can fancy what else you've heard at the club," she began, the opal lights in her eyes suddenly blazing. "They say I'm an angel, don't they?"
"They wouldn't dare say anything else in my presence."
"To be sure"—bitterly—"that's condemnation enough in itself. Before you they pronounced me a good and virtuous wife, I suppose. And behind your back—Good Heavens, what must they not say behind your back!"
"You are good and virtuous," he defended with boyish loyalty.
"Of course I am," she agreed. "I've driven one man to drink by marrying him, and more than I can count by not. I'm an angel, truly. But it's so hard to tell just what to do. I am my brother's keeper, and yet I go through life adding each year to the army of the besotted."
It was not at all the trend that young Andrews had foreseen in bringing Nina Darling to this shadowy corner of the terrace. Every fresh lead made the situation more uncomfortable. He had been brimming over with passion and sentiment, and here they had strayed away into a field rife with some of life's hardest facts.
"Promise me," she begged, "that you won't desert the civil service for the army—this army, my army!"
"God knows what I shall do, Nina!" he flung back desperately. "I banked everything on you. I didn't think you'd fail me."
"I've failed every one that ever came into my life," was her candid rejoinder. "Every time I crave and take a little passing pleasure some one suffers, and I haven't a drop of vicious blood in my veins. I believe I was cursed in my cradle."
He started to protest, but she shook her golden head dispiritedly. The blues—rare visitors—had settled down upon her.