This speech did not please Christine very much. She glanced at Paul. Somewhat to her surprise, she found him with a faint smile on his lips.
“Every one who says ‘hang the consequences’ thinks there won’t really be any,” he said.
“Consequences fall alike upon the just and the unjust,” remarked Miss Banks, through a cloud of smoke.
She, too, was smiling now, with her strong little white teeth gleaming, her dark eyes alight. She went on to express her audacious theories of life, and her energetic and reckless views about everything else, at some length.
Christine liked it less and less. She admitted freely that this Miss Banks was extraordinarily pretty, and had a debonair charm of her own, but she imagined that the girl was not to be trusted very far. She felt sure that Paul would think as she did, for they always agreed; so she looked at him, and the expression on his face surprised her. He was regarding Miss Banks with a sort of indulgence, almost compassionate, as if she were a rash and silly child, and he a man of the world.
Until this moment, Christine had looked upon Paul as a comrade, a friend, whose heart she knew as she knew her own; but now it suddenly occurred to her that Paul had been alive for twenty-six years before she had seen him, existing and thriving by himself. For some reason this idea hurt and dismayed her. She no longer listened to the lively dialogue between him and Miss Banks. She wasn’t good at talking; what she liked was to listen to Paul—but to Paul when he was talking to herself, not to Miss Banks.
“Of course I’m not interesting,” she thought. “I’ve never done anything but grow up and go to college and get married. I’ve never seen Paul so interested!”
Her far from pleasant reverie was disturbed by Miss Banks springing up.
“Well!” she said. “If you can get me into my little house, please do. I’ve got to be up early to-morrow morning, to cover the Industrial Women’s Peace Convention for my paper.”
“Are you—” began Christine.