“But in France,” he interrupted, “—in France they didn’t let the jeune fille read the books or go to the theatre.”
“No,” she agreed. “But of course over here we’ve had feminism——”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I think it’s something to do with the emancipation of women.” She paused, then added thoughtfully: “Of course, Jeannette smokes.”
“What!”
“Oh, that’s nothing at all,” she said hastily. “They’ve had to permit it in nearly all the restaurants.”
He rose, leaning heavily upon his chair, as if for support, and looking rather more pallid than usual. In fact, his brow was damp from the exertion its interior workings had undergone in the effort to comprehend his sister’s conversation. “I think, if you don’t mind,” he murmured, “I’ll go directly to bed and rest.”
“Do,” she said sympathetically. “We’ll talk some more about Jeannette to-morrow. She’s the most lovably pretty thing in the world, and you’ll be cra——” She changed the phrase hastily. “You’ll be delighted to have such a niece.”
But, as it happened, when she began to speak of Jeannette the next day, he gently protested, asking her to choose another topic. “I’m sure I couldn’t understand,” he said, “and the effort rather upsets me. It would be better to wait and let me form my own impressions when I see her.”
His sister assented without debate; and nothing more was said about Jeannette until a week later when they were on the train, and half the way home. A telegram was handed to Mrs. Troup by the porter, and after reading it, she glanced rather apprehensively toward her brother, who, in the opposite seat, was so deeply attentive to a book that he had not noticed the delivery of the telegram; in fact, he did not observe it, still in her hand, when he looked up vaguely, after a time, to speak a thought suggested by his reading.