Mrs. Mavick rambled on in the whimsical, cynical fashion of old ladies when they cease to have any active responsibility in life and become spectators of it. Their remaining enjoyment is the indulgence of frank speech.
“But I thought,” Philip interrupted, “that this part of the town was specially New York.”
“New York!” cried Carmen, with animation. “The New York of the newspapers, of the country imagination; the New York as it is known in Paris is in Wall Street and in the palaces up-town. Who are the kings of Wall Street, and who build the palaces up-town? They say that there are no Athenians in Athens, and no Romans in Rome. How many New-Yorkers are there in New York? Do New-Yorkers control the capital, rule the politics, build the palaces, direct the newspapers, furnish the entertainment, manufacture the literature, set the pace in society? Even the socialists and mobocrats are not native. Successive invaders, as in Rome, overrun and occupy the town.
“No, Mr. Burnett, I have left the existing New York. How queer it is to think about it. My first husband was from New Hampshire. My second husband was from Illinois. And there is your Murad Ault. The Lord knows where he came from.
“Talk about the barbarians occupying Rome! Look at that Ault in a palace! Who was that emperor—Caligula?—I am like the young lady from a finishing-school who said she never could remember which came first in history, Greece or Rome—who stabled his horses with stalls and mangers of gold? The Aults stable themselves that way. Ah, me! Let me give you a cup of tea. Even that is English.”
“It's an innocent pastime,” she continued, as Philip stirred his tea, in perplexity as to how he should begin to say what he had to say—“you won't object if I light a cigarette? One ought to retain at least one bad habit to keep from spiritual pride. Tea is an excuse for this. I don't think it a bad habit, though some people say that civilization is only exchanging one bad habit for another. Everything changes.”
“I don't think I have changed, Mrs. Mavick,” said Philip, with earnestness.
“No? But you will. I have known lots of people who said they never would change. They all did. No, you need not protest. I believe in you now, or I should not be drinking tea with you. But you must be tired of an old woman's gossip. Evelyn has gone out for a walk; she didn't know. I expect her any minute. Ah, I think that is her ring. I will let her in. There is nothing so hateful as a surprise.”
She turned and gave Philip her hand, and perhaps she was sincere—she had a habit of being so when it suited her interests—when she said, “There are no bygones, my friend.”
Philip waited, his heart beating a hundred to the minute. He heard greetings and whisperings in the passage-way, and then—time seemed to stand still—the door opened and Evelyn stood on the threshold, radiant from her walk, her face flushed, the dainty little figure poised in timid expectation, in maidenly hesitation, and then she stepped forward to meet his advance, with welcome in her great eyes, and gave him her hand in the old-fashioned frankness.