"Only to Paris—as prosaic a journey as any cotton-spinner could desire."
"Always plenty to be done in Paris," Daker said; "at least I have never felt at a loss. But it's a bachelor's paradise."
"And a wife's," I interposed.
"Not a husband's, you think?" Daker asked, turning the end of his moustache very tight. "I agree with you."
"I have no experience; but I have an opinion, which I have been at some pains to gather—French society spoils our simple English women."
"Most decidedly," said Daker.
"They are too simple and too affectionate for the artificial, diplomatic—shall I say heartless?—society of the salons. Their ears burn at first at the conversation. They are presented to people who would barely be tolerated in the upper circles of South Bank, St. John's Wood."
"You are right; I know it well," said Daker, very earnestly, but resuming his normal air of liveliness in an instant. "It's a bad atmosphere, but decidedly amusing. The esprit of a good salon is delicious—nothing short of it. I like to bathe in it: it just suits me, though I can't contribute much to it. We Englishmen are not alert enough in mind to hold our own against our nimble neighbours. We shall never fence, nor dance, nor rally one another as they can. We are men who don't know how to be children. It's a great pity!"
"I am not so sure of that," was the opinion I uttered. "We should lose something deeper and better. We don't enjoy life—that is, the art of living—as they do; but we reach deeper joys."
Daker smiled, and protested playfully—