“You will make me vain, Lionel. There are many things that I cannot yet grasp, although we have so many hours on hand since the loss of our furbelows. You do not realise what difference it makes in a woman’s life.—But I shall be happy when my small mission has succeeded and when I have imparted to women the love of study.”
“A man’s days were pretty much employed in the same senseless pursuits. Some feel it intensely—Lord Mowbray, for instance, who does not know what to do with his costly jewels, now he cannot stick them all over his Oriental costumes and appear as a twentieth-century Aroun-al-Raschid.”
“Ah! he will develop with the rest, and easily find out the unmarketable value of his luxury; or if he does not evolve, he will be swept away by the great wave of reform which waits for no man. But I am more concerned about Ronald Sinclair;—of course, you guess the reason.”
“Does Eva still care for him?”
“Eva is not a girl likely to change. She loved him formerly for his wit, his irony, and I am sorry to say, for his disdainful manner towards her. But her love has now acquired a new stimulus—pity, which she feels for all his deficiencies. She may in time bring him round to see life from a wider and more humane point of view, but for the present he laughs at our meetings, and vows the mixing of classes cannot succeed. He pretends that nothing but the pursuits of fastidious æstheticism can save this state of ours from vulgarity. Somehow, I feel that he is not right, though I cannot tell in what his teaching is lacking.”
“We shall do a great deal for them when we are married,” softly said Lionel.
“Ah! my dearest Lion, this is one of the serious questions that has troubled me. Nettie cannot, or will not help me in this matter; she says I have to find that out alone, and that later on she will work out the details for me. The first stumbling-block is—the wedding. What kind of a wedding could it be?”
“Well, I suppose—the church, the ceremony, and all the rest that precedes and follows such functions. It is not that I care for the whole show, dearest; I personally think it a terrible ordeal to have to exhibit oneself on such an occasion.”
“Think of it, Lionel; it means walking to the altar just as we are—no wedding dress, no bridesmaids; the congregation likewise, and the priest no better attired than the verger or bridegroom. Where would be the show? Where the customary apotheosis of smartness? Even the thunderous organ striking up Mendelssohn’s march would be an inadequate accompaniment to a procession of Adamites.”
“To tell you the truth, Gwen, I had never thought of it. The important thing was our love; the ceremony appeared to me as a thing not worth giving a thought; but now, it does seem to me an utter impossibility to go through such an incongruous function; and for the first time I see how indecent public functions are.—There have been no weddings since the storm, now I think of it.”