"People might do things like that," she said once, of a particularly unsavory episode, "but they'd never sit around and talk of it afterwards. They'd be ashamed!"
It was a comment on human nature the shrewdness of which he promptly appreciated. Jacqueline came to represent to him that invaluable portion of a writer's public, the average female mind. Under her proud guidance, Channing knew that he was writing the best and by far the cleanest of his novels.
It was at such moments that the thought of marriage came to him, and he reminded himself reluctantly that it would not do. "He travels fastest who travels alone...."
"I must speak to your mother about your voice," he said once. "She will have to let you study in Europe, or at least in New York. You're seventeen, aren't you? There's a long road to travel. No time to be lost."
"New York? But you live in Boston, don't you?"
"Heaven forbid! I was born in Boston, but one gets over it in time."
"I'm not sure now that it's worth while taking any more lessons," she said dreamily.
"You'll never be a singer without them."
"Well—sometimes I think I don't want to be a singer, Mr. Channing. Sometimes I think I'd rather be a—housekeeper, for instance."
"What! Give up fame and fortune for a hypothetical domestic career?"