“Yes, but that’s just what I want to discuss with you. I don’t like applying to the police. If I do it’ll get into the papers, and the whole thing become so odious and vulgar––”
“And it’s such an exquisite idyll now!”
He threw back his head. “She’s an exquisite idyll—in her way.”
“There! That’s what I wanted to hear you say! I’ve thought you were in love with her––”
He remembered the penciled lines in Hans Andersen. “If I have been, it’s as you may be in love with an innocent little child––”
She laughed again, wildly, almost hysterically. “Oh, Rash, don’t try to get that sort of thing off on me. I know how men love innocent little children. You can see the way they do it any night you choose to hang round the stage-door of a theatre where the exquisite idylls are playing in musical comedy.”
“Don’t Barbe! Not when you’re talking about her! I know she’s an ignorant little thing; but to me she’s like a wild-flower––”
“Wild-flowers can be cultivated, Rash.”
“Yes, but the wild-flower she’s most like is the one you see in the late summer all along the dusty highways––”
She put up both palms in a gesture of protestation. “Oh, Rash, please don’t be poetical. It gets on my nerves. I can’t stand it. I like you in every mood but your sentimental one.” She came to a halt beside 294 the mantelpiece, on which she rested an elbow, turning to look at him. “Now tell me, Rash! Suppose I wasn’t in the world at all. Or suppose you’d never heard of me. And suppose you found yourself married to this girl, just as you are—nominally—legally—but not really. Would you—would you make it—really?”