He sat there looking at her with that brilliant sunny smile, that alertness of perpetual youth.
“Well, a fancy-dress ball is mediæval bunkum, isn’t it?” he said.
“But you aren’t,” said she. “All you do, all you are, has a tremendous reality for Dennis. Everything you do is perfect in his eyes.”
“That’s good. That’s the right filial attitude. Are you as right conjugally, darling? Besides, what do you believe about the legend? Shouldn’t a child learn its faith at its mother’s knee? The legend is fairly real to you, isn’t it?”
There was the spirit that mocked. But when Dennis was concerned she was not afraid of him.
“There are many things I believe which I don’t want Dennis to believe,” she said.
He laughed.
“What an easy riddle!” he said. “You don’t want Dennis to believe that his father is an unmitigated devil. That’s the answer, so don’t trouble to say it isn’t. And as I believe in the legend too, it would be nice to have our only boy one with us. That’s the root of domestic bliss.”
“I can’t argue with you,” she said. “You mock at whatever I say.”
“But who asked you to argue?” said Colin. “I’m sure I didn’t. But as we’re on the subject I may as well say that my whole object in making a black guy of myself is to help Dennis to realize the legend. He has heard it, as everybody else has, but it’s nothing to him. Though a fancy-dress ball is only a sort of play, a play makes a thing more real to you. Dennis will be Colin in the play, and he’ll look round and see his dear Mephistopheles at his elbow.”