She turned towards him with a slight start. "What should I choose," she said, slowly "as an improvement on my life just now?"
"Yes, if you had a fairy Godmother," suggested Gerard.
"With unlimited power?" questioned Elizabeth.
He laughed. "Well, not quite that, perhaps," he said, "but—a fairy Godmother who could give you a good deal. A very charming one, too," he added, in a low voice.
Elizabeth knit her brows and pouted out her full lips, in apparently deep reflection. "If I had a fairy Godmother," she said, musingly, "and she were to give me three wishes—three, you know, is the magic number in the fairy tales—why, I should choose first of all, I think, a season in town"—
"Which you might tire of in a month," suggested Gerard.
"Not at all," said Elizabeth, decidedly, "because my second wish would be for the capacity to be always amused."
"And do you really think," said Gerard, "that you would like that—to go through life as if it were a sort of opera bouffe?"
"Why not?" said Elizabeth. "I'm a frivolous person. I confess I like opera bouffe."
"For an evening, perhaps," said Gerard, "but after a time you'd get tired of it—oh, yes, I'm sure you would—and you'd begin to think"—