There was a long silence, broken by the snapping of the match, as he lit a cigarette. She startled, rose, and leaned against a pillar. With eyes half veiled by her long lashes she watched the gardens wane dreamily in the evening light. She inhaled the odors of rose, of lilac, of jasmine, of honeysuckle—perfumes so sweet that they were sad. How cruelly she had misjudged him! She felt a kind of reverence for him now, him with this nobility of soul so unconscious, so lofty. Here was a man worth a woman's while. "Why couldn't I have had such a love as he is giving?" she thought. "Oh, if she had learned what I've learned!"
"Come into the sitting room, Gallatin," called Richard from that direction.
Gallatin went, and for a few minutes Courtney heard, in intervals between her thoughts, snatches of the talk between the two men about the shopping Gallatin had done for the laboratory—talk about a new crusher, about a promising bomb calorimeter. After a while came in Vaughan's voice, "Courtney, what do you think of that?"
She stood in the window with an inquiring glance.
"I've been telling Gallatin you're going to introduce him round among the Wenona girls. And he says he has no use for women."
"I!" exclaimed Basil. "On the contrary, I think women—a woman—the most important element in a man's life."
Richard laughed. "Why, the man's in love!" cried he.
Courtney saw Gallatin wince as his wound was struck by this careless, jovial hand.
"Only a lover," proceeded Dick, "would exaggerate woman in that frenzied fashion. To live isn't to love. It's to do—to achieve."
"I don't agree with you," said Gallatin. "Love's the center—the mainspring—the purpose—the meaning."