“Yet what?”
“In a way you are. I mean . . . Never mind. I’ll leave it there. What’s this they’re playing?”
Conversing evenly, they came to the flagged walk and the windows belching ragtime and blazing lights.
By one consent they turned and looked back into the night.
Then they passed up the steps and joined the carnival.
Let who will throw a stone at Patricia Bohun.
She certainly promised to marry a man whom she did not love. But if George Persimmon believed that such a lady would consent to bear his name for any earthly or heavenly reason other than to share his riches, then he deserved to be confined. But George was no fool. You may take it from me, Sirs, she did her neighbour no wrong. Whether a woman should sell herself is another matter. From the age of twelve Patricia had been schooled—cleverly schooled to take that unpleasant fence. Her aunt, Lady Coblow of Breathless, had not only shown her that she must marry money, but had taken care to surround her with the paraphernalia of wealth. From the age of twelve Patricia had lived and lain soft. Footmen, tiled bathrooms, French cooking, sables, limousines helped to create the atmosphere in which she moved. Use of that sort holds hard. By the time she was twenty-two she had come to regard the idea of parting with Luxury much as she looked upon that of committing suicide—a step taken only by the temporarily insane.
That Beaulieu’s outlook was different is natural enough.
He had no patron to pave his path with gold, and it was all he could do to keep his head above water. The man had gone hungry. Had he stepped out of his world, he might have waxed fat and kicked. But that would have meant leaving every friend that he had—including Patricia Bohun. He worked hard, driving a promising pen, but the promise was shadowy stuff, and his earnings were fitful and slight. It follows that while he perceived the extreme desirability of riches, he knew that they were not essential to life and more than suspected that happiness could be found without them.