“You have asked me,” he reminded her, “a good many questions. I wonder if I might be permitted to ask you one?”
“Why not? I can reserve the privilege of not answering it,” she remarked.
“People call you a fortunate woman,” he said. “You are very rich, you have a splendid home, the choice of your own friends, a certain reputation—forgive me if I quote from a society paper—as a brilliant and popular woman of the world. Yours is rather a unique position, isn’t it? I wonder,” he added, “whether you are satisfied with what you get out of life!”
“I get all that there is to be got,” she answered, a slight hardness creeping into her tone. “It mayn’t be much, but it amuses me—sometimes.”
He shook his head.
“There is more to be got out of life,” he said, “than a little amusement.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“How about yourself? You haven’t exactly the appearance of a perfectly contented being.”
“I’m hideously dissatisfied,” he admitted promptly. “Something seems to have gone wrong with me—I seem to have become a looker-on at life. I want to take a hand, and I can’t. There doesn’t seem to be any place for me. Of course, it’s only a phase,” he continued. “I shall settle down into something presently. But it’s rather beastly while it lasts.”
She looked at him, her eyes soft with laughter. Somehow his confession seemed to have delighted her.