"I'm mighty glad to be back," said she, lapsing with keen pleasure into her native dialect.
He took both her hands and shook them cordially, then looked at her from head to foot admiringly. "The latest from the Rue de la Paix, I suppose?" said he.
They seated themselves with the table between them. She, under cover of commonplaces about her travels, examined him with the utmost calmness. She saw every point wherein he fell short of the men of her class—the sort of men she ought to like and admire. But, oh, how dull and stale and narrow and petty they were, beside this man. She knew now why she had fled. She didn't want to love Victor Dorn, or to marry him—or his sort of man. But he, his intense aliveness, his keen, supple mind, had spoiled her for those others. One of them she could not marry. "I should go mad with boredom. One can no more live intimately with fashion than one can eat gold and drink diamonds. And, oh, but I am hungry and thirsty!"
"So you've had a good time?" he was saying.
"Superb," replied she. "Such scenery—such variety of people. I love Europe. But—I'm glad to be home again."
"I don't see how you can stand it," said Victor.
"Why?" inquired she in surprise.
"Unless I had an intense personal interest in the most active kind of life in a place like this, I should either fly or take to drink," replied he. "In this world you've either got to invent occupation for yourself or else keep where amusements and distractions are thrust at you from rising till bed-time. And no amusements are thrust at you in Remsen City."
"But I've been trying the life of being amused," said Jane, "and I've got enough."
"For the moment," said Victor, laughing. "You'll go back. You've got to. What else is there for you?"