Miss Davison, seated near Mrs. Van Santen, was sipping tea and nibbling bread and butter. Gerard, when the other two young men grew warm in discussion of poker and moved away a little, took the seat beside her.
“Different this, from the way the Aldingtons spend their Sunday!” said he, in a low voice as soon as their hostess had turned to talk to someone else.
“Yes,” said Rachel. “It’s rather shocking—till you get used to it.”
“I think it would always seem shocking to me,” said Gerard. “I don’t think I have any strong Sabbatarian instincts, but I suppose the old Puritan survives in us English, for I must confess that to see cards played all day on Sunday grates upon me; and I should have thought,” he added quickly, in a lower voice, “that it would have grated on you too.”
This home-thrust made her blush.
“One has to make allowance,” she said, “for other people’s ways. It’s quite true, as you say, that one’s Puritan instincts revolt from the continual card-playing; but I suppose that very strict people would say it’s just as wrong to amuse oneself as one does at the Aldingtons’, with music and conversation.”
“I don’t see how there could be the same objection to that.”
“It’s only a question of degree.”
“So that you really wouldn’t mind if we all, at the Aldingtons’, were to sit down to poker and baccarat, instead of spending the Sundays there as we do?”
She turned to him quickly.