“You shouldn’t call it ‘silly,’ Andrée. It’s not fair. He’s not silly. He’s a very intelligent, earnest man.”
“That’s the trouble with him! He’s too earnest. When I want to talk to him about nice little things—about us—he’s always so—oh, so mighty! We’re all types, and everything we do is typical of something. Imagine! Last night Bertie brought in Gaston Matthews and Johnnie Martinsburgh—darling children—Bertie says it’s chic to live like this in a hotel, without any squaw atmosphere—and Al would talk to them about his theories. Of course, they listened to him; he’s generally interesting enough, but it’s—I hated it! I suppose I wanted to do the boring myself, about music. And I know so well what they’d think of him if he weren’t rich.... They call him eccentric now, but if he were poor!”
Andrée was lying on the bed, her arms clasped behind her head; how—intractable she looked, thought her mother!
“I’m thoroughly sick of it all! All this busy life.... I can’t be busy. I don’t know how. When I look back on the old days, it seems to me I spent most of my time sitting around with you or Edna. That’s what I want now, but there’s no one to sit round with. Even when Al isn’t working, he wants to ‘take advantage’ of his playtime and rush around and see instructive things and—”
“Andrée, it’s not kind or wise to dwell so much on his little shortcomings. He has so many, many fine qualities—”
“He adores you. Mother, do you want to go and talk to him while I’m dressing? It’s very unselfish of me, because I want you every moment.... And you’re right. He is rather wonderful. He’s not common inside of him, a bit. I don’t believe he ever had a vulgar thought in his head. He’s—really delicate. He’s a nice person to—to live with.... If he only wouldn’t talk so much!”
Claudine went back into the sitting-room and found her son-in-law hard at work with a German magazine and a dictionary.
“I’ve taught myself enough German to get the sense out of things,” he explained. “We get out a little magazine we call ‘Comrades,’ with all sorts of stuff in it from the European Socialist papers, as a step toward Internationalism. I’d be satisfied if I could get just that one idea more generally accepted in my lifetime—that all the people in the world are just about the same, everywhere, that they all want the same things, and suffer from the same causes.”
He stopped suddenly.
“Do you think Andrée’s well and happy?” he asked.