"But why do you if it bores you so," protested Kemper, "I'd be hanged before I'd do it in your place."
The little half angry, half weary frown drew her eyebrows together, and she sat for a minute restlessly tapping her slippered foot upon the floor. "Oh, why do women lie and cheat and back-bite and strangle the little souls within them—to please men. Your amusements are built on our long boredom."
Was it merely the trick of pathos again, he wondered, or did the weariness in her voice sound as true as sorrow? Was she, indeed, as Laura so ardently believed, capable of larger means, of finer issues, and was her very audacity of speech but a kind of wild mourning for the soul that she had killed? A month ago he would not have asked himself the question, but his feeling for Laura had brought with it, though unconsciously, a deeper feeling for life.
"All the same I wouldn't bore myself if I were you," he returned, "and I don't think frankly men are worth it."
She laughed with an impatient jerk of her head. "Oh, it's easy to moralise," she remarked, "but I have enough of that, you know, from Laura."
"From Laura? Then she is with me?"
"She thinks so, but what does she know of life—she has never lived. Why, she isn't even in the world with us, you see." A tender little laugh escaped her. "I've even seen her," she added gayly, "read Plotinus at her dressmaker's. She says he helps her to stand the trying on."
The picture amused him, and he allowed his fancy to play about it for a moment. "I can't conceive of her surrendering to the vanities," he said at last.
"You can't?" Gerty's tone had softened, though she still spoke merrily. "Well, I call no woman safe until she's dead."
His imagination, always eager in pursuit of the elusive possibility, sprang suddenly in the train of her suggestion, and he felt the sting of a dangerous pleasure in his blood.