"Because you don't even like him."
"What a strange way of advocating your friend you have."
Arkwright flushed scarlet. "I thought you'd quite dismissed him as a possibility," he stammered.
"With a woman every man's a possibility so long as no man's a certainty."
"Margaret, you couldn't marry a man you didn't like?"
She seemed to reflect. "Not if I were in love with another at the time," she said finally. "That's as far as my womanly delicacy—what's left of it after my years in society—can influence me. And it's stronger, I believe, than the delicacy of most women of our sort."
They were sitting now on the bench round the circle where the fountain was tossing high its jets in play with the sunshine. She was looking very much the woman of the fashionable world, and the soft grays, shading into blues, that dominated her costume gave her an exceeding and entrancing seeming of fragility. Arkwright thought her eyes wonderful; the sweet, powerful yet delicate odor of the lilac sachet powder with which her every garment was saturated set upon his senses like a love-philter.
"Yes, you are finer and nobler than most women," he said giddily. "And that's why it distresses me to hear you talk even in jest, as if you could marry Josh."
"And a few weeks ago you were suggesting him as just the husband for me."
Arkwright was silent. How could he go on? How tell her why he had changed without committing himself to her by a proposal? She was fascinating—would be an ideal wife. With what style and taste she'd entertain—how she'd shine at the head of his table! What a satisfaction it would be to feel that his money was being so competently spent. But—well, he did not wish to marry, not just yet; perhaps, somewhere in the world, he would find, in the next few years, a woman even better suited to him than Margaret. Marrying was a serious business. True, now that divorce had pushed its way up and had become recognized by fashionable society, had become an established social favorite, marriage had been robbed of one of its terrors. But the other remained—divorce still meant alimony. The woman who trapped an eligible never endangered her hard-earned position; a man must be extremely careful or he would find himself forced to hard choice between keeping on with a woman he wished to be rid of and paying out a large part of his income in alimony. It seemed far-fetched to think of these things in connection with such a woman as Margaret. He certainly never could grow tired of her, and her looks were of the sort that had staying power. Nor was she in the least likely to be so ungrateful as to wish to be rid of him and hold him up for alimony. Still—wouldn't it have been seemingly just as absurd to consider in advance such sordid matters in connection with any one of a dozen couples among his friends whose matrimonial enterprises had gone smash? It was said that nowadays girls went to the altar thinking that if the husbands they were taking proved unsatisfactory they would soon be free again, the better off by the title of Mrs. and a good stiff alimony and some invaluable experience. "I must keep my head," thought he. "I must consider how I'd feel after the fatal cards were out."