“You ladies are all talking nonsense, and you know it. Even little Desire over there knows it. Directly you begin to like a man you begin to think of marriage—only some of you begin to think of running away from it ‘Between men and women there is no friendship possible. Passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship’—you remember Lord Darlington’s lines. When love is trifled with, it sours into hatred. Every man who loves a woman has his moments when he hates her intensely.”
“Did you ever hate me?” Fluffy covered his hand to insure the answer she required.
“Yes. And you’ve hated me. Desire could tell just how much if she dared. You women all discuss your love-affairs. You’re fondest of a man when he’s absent. When he’s present, you never confess.”
Teddy sat quietly listening. He thought how silly these people were to talk so much and to love so little. Life was going by them; none of them had begun to live yet They were like timid bathers at the seaside, who splashed and paddled, but never really got wet. They wouldn’t learn to swim for fear of getting drowned. He wished he could take them to a house in Eden Row, where a man and woman were living bravely and accepting hard knocks as things to be expected. While he listened, he watched Desire, wondering what ghostly thoughts were wandering behind her wistful eyes.
Chairs were pushed back. They were leaving the room. Fluffy turned to meet him in the doorway. Her arm was about Desire. She hung her head, glancing searchingly from one to the other.
“We’re a pack of fools,” she whispered intensely. “Don’t you listen to us.” She took Teddy’s hand and hesitated at a loss for words. With a sudden gust of emotion she kissed him. “Little Desire, why don’t you marry him? He looks at you so lovingly and sadly.”
“Marry him!” Desire faltered. “I don’t know. But we’re very fond of each other, aren’t we, Teddy?”
It was the first time she had called him that. The babies came into her eyes; she broke from Fluffy and ran down the passage. From a safe distance she called laughingly, “I won’t have you hanging about with my beau. You’ll be kissing him again; and I won’t have you kissing him when I’m not present.”
In the room which overlooked the Hudson, Vashti was playing. For a minute Teddy had a vision of how he had first seen her with Hal; only times had changed. The man who bent across her shoulder now was Mr. Dak. It was a child’s song that she was singing, about a lady who was devoted to a poodle-dog which died, and how she fretted and fretted. The last verse leapt out of melancholy into merriment,
“But e’er three months had past