"Ah, she is beautiful!" he said eagerly. "Doesn't she look splendid in her furs? By Jove, you are right! She is a beautiful woman. I am proud of her!"
Then the smile faded from his face.
"Beautiful," he said half to himself, "but hard."
"Come now," said Bernardine; "you are surrounded with books and newspapers. What shall I read to you?"
"No one reads what I want," he answered peevishly. "My tastes are not their tastes. I don't suppose you would care to read what I want to hear!"
"Well," she said cheerily, "try me. Make your choice."
"Very well, the Sporting and Dramatic," he said. "Read every word of that. And about that theatrical divorce case. And every word of that too. Don't you skip, and cheat me."
She laughed and settled herself down to amuse him. And he listened contentedly.
"That is something like literature," he said once or twice. "I can understand papers of that sort going like wild-fire."
When he was tired of being read to, she talked to him in a manner that would have astonished the Disagreeable Man: not of books, nor learning, but of people she had met and of Places she had seen; and there was fun in everything she said. She knew London well, and she could tell him about the Jewish and the Chinese quarters, and about her adventures in company with a man who took her here, there, and everywhere.