“He says most people who come up are alternately hopeless barbarians and hopelessly conventional, but that you took the right course. You learned to be conventional—learned the rules—before you ventured to try to make personal variations in them.”
“I’m slow to risk variations,” said I. “Most of the efforts in that direction are—eccentric. And I detest eccentricity as much as I like originality.”
“If Mr. Beechman were only a little less conventional!” sighed she. “I’m afraid he’d be rather—” She hesitated.
“Tiresome?” I ventured to suggest.
“Tiresome,” she assented. “But—there would be the children. Do you think he’d try to interfere with me there?”
“You’ll never know that until you’ve married him,” said I.
“It’s a pity he has an occupation that would keep him round the house most of the time,” said she. “That’s a trial to a woman. She’s always being interrupted when she wishes to be free.”
“You mustn’t expect too much,” said I. “I think the children will be your children.”
She did not reply in words. But a sudden strengthening of her expression made me feel that I was getting a glimpse of her father.
We talked no more of Beechman or of any personalities related to this story. When the bridge party broke up and a supper was served on deck, she and Beechman sat together. And I gathered from the sounds coming from their direction that he was making progress. My spirits gradually oozed away and I sat glumly pretending to listen while Mrs. Raphael talked to me. Usually she interested me because she talked what she knew and knew things worth while. But that night I heard scarcely a word she said. When the party, one by one, began to go below, Mrs. Kirkwood joined me and found an opportunity to say, aside: