My heart felt absurdly heavy at the announcement. Had I still hoped that it could be otherwise? Silly of me!
I asked, succeeding in not sounding wistful: "Do you think, then, that she is in love with him after all, Colonel Fielding?"
Elizabeth's young Colonel stopped on the road where we walked. He turned to me as if he hadn't caught what I'd said. He frowned a little, and yet he was smiling under that absurdly soft golden feather of a moustache. He repeated: "In love? Miss Elvey? Of course not. Miss Elvey isn't the kind of girl who would ever be in love with anybody whomsoever."
I stopped too. We faced each other on that road at a dead standstill, as people do when their talk becomes more interesting to each other than their walk. I was more than eager to know exactly what this young man thought of the girl who had stolen my admirer, and who was probably going to marry the other man whom I myself admired. The girl whom all men loved and of whom all women were jealous. What was Colonel Fielding's view of her?
"You told me, the day you got engaged, that when you had time you would tell me all about Muriel's 'kind,'" I reminded him. "Tell me now."
"Oh ... er ... I don't know that there's so much to tell," he said, looking at me. "She's just one of the mystery-girls who seem to have everything a girl should have; looks, go, charm, laughter. But ... er ... Well! She hasn't got love. That power's just been left out of her composition, Miss Matthews. She's cold; she's null. She's—she's just the opposite to your little friend," his voice grew tender, "and mine."
"Elizabeth? But—except for you—Elizabeth doesn't like men. Muriel doesn't like anything better!"
He shook his head, the only man's head I'd met that seemed full of "feminine" intuitions.
"Muriel doesn't like men," he told me. "She likes what men can give her. Attention. A good time. Admiration ad lib. The cachet of being seen about, queening it over them. The sense of power; the atmosphere of ... er ... incense. That's what Muriel asks of men. Nothing else."
Puzzled, I said: "I don't understand."