‘There is no returning to old days,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘People of our age should have sense enough to realise this. The exclusive boy-and-girl idolatry of one year of life would be rank absurdity in a dignified Darby and Joan of our standing.’
Dinah shrank away from him. Perhaps it occurred to her that exclusive idolatry had never existed at all on Gaston’s side. How long, in truth, did he keep to the declaration, made in his honeymoon, of preferring quiet evenings with her to the best dinner-parties in London?
‘When I came in just now, Dinah, I interrupted you at some spiritual exercise, not high enough to be called prayer, yet that required a kneeling attitude. It is a pity,’ said Mr. Arbuthnot, looking disagreeable, ‘that the self-communings of good people so seldom lead them to charity—I don’t mean almsgiving—I mean a broader, more charitable frame of mind. If you could only recognise one fact, that there is a great variety of human nature about you in the world, it would be something gained.’
‘I know it, Gaston. What I want is to be lifted out of my own narrow ignorance.’
‘Take Geoffrey, for instance. In Geoffrey we have a man sound to the core. No caprice, no vanity in our cousin, none of the discontent and levity, and thirst for amusement which disfigure some characters that might be named. For contrast,’ Gaston Arbuthnot’s eyes rested discerningly on his wife, ‘look at Rex Basire—an empty-skulled little tailor’s block, doubtless, yet with a brave soldier’s heart in him all the same! By the bye, my dear, I need not exhort you,’ he added lightly, ‘to be charitable to Lord Rex. If women would only be as fair towards each other as they are towards us! I really admired the philosophy with which you gave that young gentleman his lesson in cross-stitch to-day.’
The careless tone of banter brought back Dinah’s accustomed self-control. Nothing so effectually checks emotion as the absence of emotion in our fellow-actors.
‘Lord Rex was bent upon working three or four stitches in my ottoman. It cost me the trouble only of unpicking them, and when he asked my leave I was ignorant—I always am ignorant—about the politeness of saying “No.” That is what I must learn.’
‘The art of saying “No,”’ observed Mr. Arbuthnot, not in a very hearty voice.
‘The art of speaking and acting—well, as Mrs. Thorne, as every woman of your world, would do! There’s no going back to old days, Gaston. You are right there. I must shape myself to things as they are, not to try to shape them to my needs. That is chiefly why I accepted the invitation for Wednesday. I mean to learn from the example of others. I mean to turn over a new leaf from to-day.’