“I wish you could feel some of my indignation over that statement,” he made quiet comment. “Now and then you have caprices for the most unique frankness I ever have noticed in a woman. Tell me, do you have no yearnings whatever over our unfortunate boy?”
She looked interested, as if at a compliment.
“I pride myself on my frankness. Of course any woman has a natural affection for her own child. But, as you know, I am a beauty lover. It is not my fault that I can’t love Jack as I should if he looked like me, or even you.”
“Perhaps, Catherine, he inherited something from you. Perhaps he also is a beauty lover. Should you consider the suggestion that the ‘viciousness’ you accredit to me may be in him an extreme case of nerves—of a suffering over his deformity older than you’d expect at eight years?”
She was thumbing the pages of her morocco-bound engagement book and omitted to reply.
With a sadness too complete for contempt, he added: “You often have wondered where Jack’s ugliness comes from. I’ll tell you—from the ill-favored spirit of our marriage.”
Catherine looked startled. Then she looked indignant. After that, with a sigh of long-sufferance, she looked very sweet.
In a voice gentle as his had been—“Since you take my refusal so hard as to resort to your semi-occasional marital recriminations, dear John, I’ll yield. I will go with you to the toy-shop, although probably I’ll have to break a luncheon engagement in consequence. You can’t ever say that I am unwilling to do my part. Just a minute until I see what I have on to-day.”
Soon and coaxingly she glanced up at him. Her upper lip shortened over mouse-like teeth which gleamed, sharp and white, between their crimson guards. Even with the husband who claimed to know her, Catherine never was chary of her ingenuous, confiding smiles.
“It’s your turn to make a concession. On our way to the toy-shop, stop in with me at a showing of underwear at Seff’s. It lasts only from twelve to one and I’ll miss it if I go further down town. Even puritanical you may be amused. Seff is rather sensational in his advertising, but he does import lovely things. Here is the invitation for the latest of his shows. Do you mind?”