He laughed as he said, "The most artistic emotions have some selfishness in them, I admit it."
"It would make a little variety if I sent a duplicate to Mr. Quisanté!"
Here he would not follow her in her banter. He grew grave and even frowned, but all he said was, "Really there are limits, you know." It was her own verdict, expressed more tersely, more completely, and more finally. There were limits, and Alexander Quisanté was beyond them; the barrier they raised could not be surmounted; he could not fly over it even on the wings of his moments.
"You above everybody oughtn't to know such people," Marchmont went on.
Now he was thinking of the type she was supposed to represent; that was the fashion in which it was appropriate to talk to the type.
"I'm not in the very least like that really," she assured him. "If you knew me better you'd find that out very soon."
"I'm willing to risk it."
Flirtation for flirtation—and this conversation was becoming one—there could be no comparison between Marchmont's and Quisanté's; the one was delightful, the other odious; the one combined charm with dignity; the other was a mixture of cringing and presumption. May put the contrast no less strongly than this as she yielded to the impulse of the minute and gave the lie to Marchmont's ideal of her by her reckless acceptance of the immediate delights he offered. The ideal would no doubt cause him to put a great deal of meaning into her acceptance; whether such meaning were one she would be prepared to indorse her mood did not allow her to consider. She showed him very marked favour that evening, and in his company contrived to forget entirely the puzzle of Quisanté and his moments, and the possible relation of those moments to the limits about which her companion was so decisive.
At last, however, they were interrupted. The interruption came from Dick Benyon, who had looked in somewhere else and arrived now at the tail of the evening. Far too eager and engrossed in his great theme to care whether his appearance were welcome, he dashed up to May, crying out even before he reached her, "Well, what do you say about him now? Wasn't he splendid?"
Clearly Dick forgot his earlier apologetic period; for him the moment was the evening. A cool question from Marchmont, the cooler perhaps for annoyance, forced Dick into explanations, and he sketched in his summary fashion the incident which had aroused his enthusiasm and made him look so confidently for a response from May. Marchmont was unreservedly and almost scornfully antagonistic.