"Yes, my dear, but it's a little different now," said Dodo. "You are engaged to Seymour, and Hugh is going to be there, too."
"Yes, but that makes it all the simpler."
Dodo got up.
"I wonder if you realize that Seymour is in love with you," she said. "In love with you like Hugh is, I mean."
"Perfectly, and he is charming about it," said Nadine. "And I practise every morning being in love with him like that. I think I am getting on very well. I dreamed about him last night. I thought he gave me a great box of jade and when I opened it, there was a rabbit inside—"
"That shows great progress," said Dodo.
"Mama, I think you are laughing at me. But what would you have? I am very fond of him, he is handsome and clever and charming. I expected to find it tiresome when he told me he was in love like that, but it is not the least so."
Memories of the man she had married when she was even younger than Nadine, came unbidden into Dodo's mind: she remembered her first husband's blind, dog-like devotion and her own ennui when he strove to express it, to communicate it to her.
"Nadine," she said, "treat it reverently, my dear. There is nothing in the world that a man can give a woman that is to be compared to that. It is better than a rabbit in a jade-box. When I was even younger than you, Papa Jack's cousin gave it me, and—and I didn't reverence it. Don't repeat my irreparable error."
"Weren't you nice to him?" asked Nadine.