He paused. The fountain whispered in the shade of the pomegranates. A nun was gathering flowers for the chapel. Outside, the turmoil of the East sounded like the distant chattering of innumerable monkeys.
“You’ve so nearly reached the point at which a man has the right to approach a woman,” Sylvia said, “that if you’re asking my advice, I advise you to wait until you do actually reach that point. Of course you may lose her by waiting. She may marry somebody else.”
“Oh, I know; I’ve thought of that. In a way that would be a solution.”
“So long as you regard her marriage with somebody else as a solution, you’re still some way from the point. It’s curious she should be a ballet-girl, because Mrs. Gainsborough, you know, was a ballet-girl. In 1869, when she took her emotional plunge, she was able to exchange the wings of Covent Garden for the wings of love easily enough. In 1869 ballet-girls never thought of marrying what were and are called ‘gentlemen.’ I think Mrs. Gainsborough would consider her life a success; she was not too much married to spoil love, and the captain was certainly more devoted to her than most husbands would have been. The proof that her life was a success is that she has remained young. Yet if I introduce you to her you’ll see at once your own Jenny at sixty like her—that won’t be at all a hard feat of imagination. But you’ll still be seeing yourself at twenty-five or whatever you are; you’ll never be able to see yourself at sixty; therefore I sha’n’t introduce you. I’m too much of a woman not to hope with all my heart that you’ll go home to England, marry your Jenny, and live happily ever afterward, and I think you’d better not meet Mrs. Gainsborough, in case she prejudices your resolve. Thanks for giving me your confidence.”
“Oh no! Thank you for listening,” said Avery.
“I’m glad you’re not going to develop her. I once suffered from that kind of vivisection myself, though I never had a cockney accent. Some souls can’t stand straight lacing, just as some bodies revolt from stays. And so Michael is in a monastery? I suppose that means all his soul spasms are finally allayed?”
“O Lord! No!” said Avery. “He’s in the very middle of them.”
“What I really meant to say was heart palpitations.”
“I don’t think, really,” said Avery, “that Michael ever had them.”
“What was Lily, then?”