"Beryl!" he murmured reproachfully. "You know that I have no friends—if by friends you mean girl friends."
"It is my mad jealousy which makes me ask these questions," she said quizzically, "come along, Ronnie, we will be late."
What the play was about, Beryl never quite remembered. Ronnie, sitting in the shade of the curtains, was more interested in his companion. It was strange that he had known her ever since she was a child and he a schoolboy, and yet had never received a true impression of her beauty. He watched her through the first act, the tilt of her chin, the quick smile.
"Beryl, you ought to be painted," he said in the first interval. "I mean by a portrait painter. You look so perfectly splendid that I couldn't take my eyes off you."
The color came slowly and, in the dim light of the box, a man who had not been looking for this evidence of her pleasure, would have seen nothing.
"That is a little less subtle than the usual brand of flattery you practice, isn't it, Ronnie? Or is your artlessness really an art that conceals art?"
"I'm not flattering you—I simply speak as I feel. I never realized your loveliness until tonight." She straightened up and laughed.
"You think I'm crude—I suppose I am. You do not say that I am keeping my hand in, though you probably think so. I admit I have had all sorts of flirtations, in fact, I have been rather a blackguard in that way, and of course I've said nice things to girls—buttered them and played to their vanity. But if I were trying to make love to you, I should be a little more subtle, as you say. I should imply my compliments. It is just because my—my spasm is unpremeditated that I find myself at a loss for words. There is no sense in my making love to you, anyway, supposing that you would allow me. I can't marry—I simply won't marry until I have enough money and I haven't nearly enough. If in four years' time the money doesn't come—well then, I'll risk being a pauper, but the girl will have to know."
She said nothing. Here was an unexpected side to his character. He had some plan of life and a code of sorts. If she had been better acquainted with that life of his, which she so far suspected, she would have grown alert when Ronnie unmasked his way of retreat. She was surprised at his virtuous reluctance to make a woman share his comparative poverty—she should have been suspicious when he fixed a time limit to his bachelorhood. It was not like Ronnie to plan so far in advance, that she knew; it might have occurred to her that he was definitely excusing the postponement of marriage. As it was, she was seeing him in a more favorable light. Ronnie desired that she should. His instinct in these matters was uncannily accurate.
"It was worth coming out with you, if only to hear your views on matrimony," was all the comment she made.