When she had completed her arrangements she drove to one of the theaters to pass the time until her expected guests would arrive. A man she knew joined her there, and she invited him also to return with her to supper. She seemed in the wildest spirits; she laughed and jested, and showed her white teeth; all the while a cold sharp pang lay pressing on her heart.
The supper was a great success, and never had Kathleen Weir been so witty or so gay. She sang, she coquetted, and played her part so well that Linda Falconer looked at her with her shadowed, dreamy eyes, and asked her if she had come into a fortune.
“I have the prospect of one, at all events,” answered Kathleen; “and there is nothing like money, you know, Linda—nothing, nothing!”
“I think there is something better than money,” said Dereham, with his honest brown eyes fixed on Linda Falconer’s lovely face.
“You mean love!” And Kathleen Weir shrugged her white shoulders. “My friend, that is because you are young and innocent. Love is a delusion, a pitfall into which we stumble only to find it full of disappointments. We love a man or a woman whom at the time we think perfection, but it is not the true man or woman, but an idealized creature of our own imaginations. We find this out when it is too late, and we blame the unfortunate recipient of our deluded affections, not our own folly in being deluded.”
“Well, I believe in love,” answered Dereham, sturdily.
“Long may you believe in it, then,” said Kathleen, with a light laugh. “But, Dereham, you won’t. You too will wake up and find your idol shattered.”
“How spiteful you are, Kathleen!” remarked Linda Falconer, calmly. “Have you had a disappointment in love lately?”
“No, my dear, for I have not been in love. I love myself too well to waste my affections on an ungrateful man.”
“But you might find a grateful one?” said one of her friends, smiling.