"You'll admit," she said aloud, at last making ready to go in, "most people have never suspected how good and wonderful the world is—so, plainly, it must be for me (and one or two besides) that it's so fine and terrible a thing to be a dweller in it. Poor world!"—she stopped on the threshold and looked back at the night—"when men rail at you so dully, no wonder you stop their mouths with dust. But for me, I love you. Even when you hurt me I love you—I love you! You'll not get many to bear so good-humoredly with all your wild moods as I—make the most of me. Let me stay a long, long time." And again she went blithely to face death, after the manner of women.
In London and Paris Val made her husband renew his old friendships, and show her that picturesque and holiday side of life so charming to the American woman. Dressed for Lady Eamont's garden-party one day at the end of June, Val stood radiant in her pretty clothes before the long mirror in the drawing-room of her house in Bruton street, waiting for the carriage.
"I feel like a lady on a Watteau fan," she said, rejoicing frankly in the dainty elegance of her Paris frock. "It's all so airy and so cobwebby. Don't breathe hard," she cried, as Ethan bent over her; "a breath will blow me away."
"Are you as happy as you look?" he asked, smiling.
"Happy! I think nobody was ever so happy before. I believed I knew how beautiful life was, but I didn't."
She looked out of the open window. It was one of those peerless summer days with which England repays her months of gloom. The white silk curtains waved in the soft air, bringing in wafts of mignonette from the window-boxes. Val threw back her head with the old movement, smiling. "Yes, it's easy to see," said Ethan to himself, "easy to see what she's thinking."
"I'm glad you're so happy. I was afraid you didn't sleep well last night; you were so restless."
"Was I?" She laughed. "Oh, I suppose I grudge the time I waste in sleep. There's the carriage."
As the days wore on he lost his fear of pricking the bright bubble of her gladness. The life they led left little time for meditation, and Val's enjoyment of balls, races, and kindred festivities, gave him an interest in the old round that surprised no one more than himself. He saw it all in a new and tender light, this mask of fair women, leagued in their age-old conspiracy, gliding across ballroom floors, trailing flower-like fabrics over velvet lawns, decorating the tops of coaches, and making of boats up the river floating gardens. There was much art in this determined turning of life into a festival; there might be philosophy, too, in woman's light-hearted begging of the "Question."
If the men tried here and there to wile Val's heart away, why, that was part of the game, and the women certainly did not neglect Val's husband.