“Probably,” suggested Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, with a note of recklessness in her voice, “your friend Fenton, if he is a man of the world,—and he probably is, as you call him cynical,—would ask you if this unhappy being was married or unmarried. If you told him she was free”—
“Well?”
“Well, he would advise you to check your sympathy and defend your own freedom.”
“And if I said that she was married?”
“He would say that you must have known her a long time to take such a liberty.” The words were robbed of their harshness by the smile that accompanied them.
“Forgive me, please,” he pleaded, bending over her. “How can I help it if words come unbidden to my lips, if I forget that I have known you only a few hours? Won’t you absolve me before I go?”
She stood up and gave him her hand.
“I have forgiven you,” she said. “It was my fault. You are too sensitive to music.”
Then with that charming inconsistency that adds so much to woman’s fascination and to the sorrows of the world, she continued:—
“Have you an engagement, Mr. Stoughton, for Friday night? No? I should so much like to have you join us in our box at the Metropolitan that evening. ‘Sanson et Dalila’ is to be given for the first time in this country, you know. Would you care to hear it?”