Marion looked on complacently as I greeted him. I remembered then that she had rather seemed to resent the sisterly salute I thought necessary to bestow on him after the wedding, and the brotherly salutes (repeated four times in succession) he had given me in return. I decided at that moment I would respect her objections and only shake hands with William in future. I am sure she preferred it, and I should hate to displease her.
Besides, beards do rasp one so.
Henry now emerged from the study full of hearty greeting and bonhomie. He seemed less surprised at William's altered appearance than I did, and was certainly more pleased about it.
'What made you let him do it?' I said reproachfully to Marion when we were alone, 'he was a really handsome man before, and now——'
'That's just it,' she interrupted, 'he was too handsome, and it wasn't safe for him.'
'Not safe, Marion?'
'Women wouldn't leave him alone—they all flirted with him. It would have been all right if he'd been used to it before, but getting good-looking so suddenly unbalanced him. From a kind of puzzled wonder that he should thus attract the opposite sex, he began to develop an interest in what he termed "their bewildering number of types." He said he used to think they were all exactly alike. It was when he declared his intention of writing a eulogy on woman that I stepped in and insisted on his letting his beard grow again. Don't you think I acted for the best?'
'No doubt you did,' I said pensively, 'but he had such an attractive mouth.'
Marion regarded me severely. 'That's what all the other women seemed to think. I feel I was justified in protecting him.'
'No doubt you were, dear,' I murmured, with meekly lowered eyes. 'Don't you ever regret him as he was before?'