“I shall go back in about a fortnight,” she said.
“Why, that’s just about when I am going,” he said cheerfully. “I hope we shall travel together.”
And with the unhesitatingness of well-bred delicacy he got off the balustrade and began to talk to Miss Vanderbilt.
Tom was far too much of a gentleman to let his mind consciously dwell on what he had seen during that flash of lightning. He regarded it like a remark accidentally overheard, of which he had no right to profit. In this case the wish was also absent, for though he liked Maud Wrexham immensely, he was already in the first stage of his love of idealism, which at present allowed no divided allegiance. Had Maud been an idealist herself, she might have appeared to him merely as the incarnation of the spirit of idealism, in which case he would have fallen down and worshipped. Tom had experienced a great shock the day before, when she had expressed admiration for Manvers’ Dame qui s’amuse.
They were on the Acropolis together when Tom mentioned it, and asked if she had seen it.
“Yes, he showed it me this morning. I think it’s extraordinarily good.”
“But you don’t like it?” asked Tom.
“Is it so terrible if I do? I don’t like it as I like this”—and she looked round largely at the Propylæa—“but it gives me great pleasure to look at it. It’s so fearfully clever.”
“No man can serve two masters,” he said. “If you like this, as you tell me you do, you loathe the other necessarily.”
“Oh, but you’re just a little too fond of dogmatising,” said Maud. “What you lay down as a necessity may be only a limitation in your own nature. How do you know I can’t appreciate both? As a matter of fact I do.”