"The perfection of everything is rare," said I, looking pointedly in her face. She put up her hand, lightly fingered the curls on her forehead, smiled at me, and turned again to her salad. I laughed. She looked up again quickly.
"You laugh at me?" she asked, not resentfully, but with an air of frank inquiry.
"No, at the human race, mademoiselle. It is we, not you, who excite laughter."
She regarded me with apparent curiosity, and gradually began to smile. "Why?" she asked, just showing her level white teeth.
"You haven't learned yet?"
William Adolphus began to speak to her. You would have sworn she had a deaf ear that side. She had finished her salad and sat turned toward me. If a very white shoulder could at all console my brother-in-law, he had an admirable view of one. Apparently he was not content; he pushed his chair back with a noise and called to me:
"Shall we smoke? I have eaten enough."
"With all my heart," I answered.
"In fact he has eaten too much," observed Coralie, by no means in an "aside." "He and I—we both eat too much. He is fat already. I shall be."
"You are talkative to-night, mademoiselle," said Varvilliers, who was offering her a cigarette.