“About my marriage?”
“About your marriage.”
She continued to consider him between half-drawn lids. “What can I say that Mrs. Leath has not already told you?”
“Mrs. Leath has told me nothing whatever but the fact—and her pleasure in it.”
“Well; aren’t those the two essential points?”
“The essential points to you? I should have thought——”
“Oh, to you, I meant,” she put in keenly.
He flushed at the retort, but steadied himself and rejoined: “The essential point to me is, of course, that you should be doing what’s really best for you.”
She sat silent, with lowered lashes. At length she stretched out her arm and took up from the table a little threadbare Chinese hand-screen. She turned its ebony stem once or twice between her fingers, and as she did so Darrow was whimsically struck by the way in which their evanescent slight romance was symbolized by the fading lines on the frail silk.
“Do you think my engagement to Mr. Leath not really best for me?” she asked at length.