Belle laughed. "I knew you'd say that. Personally I didn't see it coming. After we'd left Oxford I began to think that Nicholas had only been flirting with me. He wrote such curious, aloof little letters and very few of them. They might have been written by an epigramist to his maiden aunt; but last night,—well, last night made everything different, and this afternoon we've had a long talk. Of course I wish we were going to be openly and properly engaged, but I'm very happy and so I don't grumble."
"As the future Countess of Shropshire, I wonder whether you will ever give a little back room in your beautiful English place to the young American lawyer and his wife!"
"Betty, I swear to you that I don't care a dime about all that now,—I mean the title and the place. It's just Nicholas that I want—Nicholas, and no one else. I wouldn't care if he were what he calls a 'bounder' or a 'townee.' My dear, I'm mad about him—just mad."
"Isn't everything as right as Truth?" said Betty. "The more I see Peter the more I love him. He's,—well, he's a man, and he's mine. He's mine for another reason, and that's because he's always going to be a boy, and I'm here to look after him. He'll need me. And I must have him need me, too, because I need to be needed. Do you understand?"
Belle nodded. "You're the born mother, my dear," she said, "whereas, I'm,—well, not. I want love—just love. I'll give everything I've got in the world for that—everything. Love and excitement and movement,—to go from place to place meeting new people, hearing new languages, seeing new types, living bigly and broadly, being consulted by a man who's brilliant and far-seeing,—that's what I need. That's my idea of life. Ah-h!" She shot out a deep breath and threw her chin up as though to challenge argument.
Betty watched her with admiration. She had never looked so unusual, so exhilarated, so fine. All about her there was the very essence of youth and courage and health. There was a glow in her white skin that was the mere reflection of the fire that was alight in her heart. Given happiness this girl would burst into the most fragrant blossoming and gleam among her sisters like a rose in a pansy bed. Given pain and disillusion she had it in her to fling rules, observances, caution, common sense and even self-respect to the four winds and go with all possible speed to the devil.
"What would have happened to us both if we hadn't gone to Oxford?" asked Betty, with an almost comical touch of gravity. "Think! I should be doomed to be a little old maid, with nothing but an even smaller dog to keep in order, and as for you——"
"I? Don't let's talk about it. I should have gone top-pace through several years and then, with thirty looming ahead, married a nice safe man with oodles of money who would spend his life following me round. Thank Heaven, I shall never be the centre of that ghastly picture!"
And so they went on, these two young things, opening up their hearts to each other as they walked home and flying off at all manner of feminine tangents.
Kenyon, perfectly satisfied with his talk to Belle, whom he had secured without binding himself to anything definite, was wearing white spats, and so he picked his way across the wet streets like a cat on hot bricks. For several blocks he permitted Peter to talk about Betty. His affectation of interest and sympathy was not so well done as usual. He had determined, with a sort of professional jealousy, not to allow Ita Strabosck to trade on Graham's credulity any longer. All his thoughts were concentrated on his plan to smash up that burlesque arrangement, as he inwardly called it. If anyone were to make use of Graham he intended to be that one. The girl, at present a humble member of the great army of parasites in which he held a commission, must be cleared out. She was inconveniently in the way.