“We had only got you as far as short dresses,” said he. “When you left that boarding school——”
“Nothing since,” interrupted she. “I’ve simply been sitting round waiting for a husband. What else is there for a woman? Still, I never wish I’d been a man.”
“Why not?” asked George. He was twisted into one of his strange poses—legs wound round each other, body bent forward, supported by his elbows. He had never been so blissfully, airily happy as watching this beautiful girl, with the most wonderful light he had ever beheld reflecting from her fair shoulders.
She looked at him with eyes suddenly grave. “Because as a woman I have the chance to be some day loved by a man. As a man”—her eyes danced—“I’d have had nothing to look forward to but just a woman.”
“What kind of a man do you want?” asked he—and his honest, rugged face showed in its frank innocence how impersonal the question was.
“A man like you,” said she audaciously, her face merry.
He laughed loudly—a contagious outburst of joyous good humor that made the luxurious, conventional room seem a poor sort of place. Such a laugh is a very different matter from one that seems a poor, noisy sort of clamor in a room.
“You have courage—strength. You don’t pose.” All this she said with the lightness that made it in good taste—and none the less sincere. “You are on the side all these other men have deserted as soon as they became prosperous.”
“Perhaps I shall, too,” said he.
“I suppose it must be the wrong side, or surely all of them wouldn’t have left it. But—somehow, I think you won’t.”