People were very glad to go to Mrs. Dykman’s house. She never had any surprises for them, but they always went away feeling that her evening had been one of the successes of the season. In her palmier days she had done much entertaining, and seen a great deal of the world. She had been a beauty in her youth, and was still so handsome that people forgot to insult her by calling her “well preserved.” If her hair had turned gray, the world never found it out; she wore a dark-brown wig which no one but her maid had ever seen elsewhere than on her head; and her unfathomable gray eyes had not a wrinkle about them. She still carried her head with the air of one who has had much incense offered her, and, although her repose amounted to monotony, it was very impressive. She had grown stout, but every curve of her gowns, every arrangement of draperies, lied as gracefully and conclusively as a diplomatist. She was one of the few women upon whom Quintard ever called, and he was a great pet of hers.
“She may not be an intellectual woman,” he said to Hermia, on this night of the musicale, “but she has learned enough in her life to make up for it. I have seldom met a more interesting woman. If she were twenty years younger, I’d ask her to marry and knock about the world with me.”
“Yes? I suppose you find the intellectual a good deal of a bore, do you not?”
“Was that a shot? By itself, emphatically yes—a hideous bore. When combined with one or two other things, most eagerly to be welcomed.”
“What other things?”
“Oh, womanliness and savoir—but, primarily, passion.”
“Do you know that you are very frank?” exclaimed Hermia.
“I beg your pardon,” humbly. “I have a bad habit of saying what I think, and, besides, I feel a doubly strong impulse to be frank with you. I abominate girls as a rule; I never talk to them. But I have rather a feeling of good comradeship with you. It always seems as if you understood, and it never occurs to me that I can make a mistake with you. You are quite unlike other girls. You have naturally a broad mind. Do not deliberately contract it.”
“No,” said Hermia, quite mollified, “I have no desire to; and, for some peculiar reason, what you say may startle but it never offends. You have a way of carrying things off.”
After the music and supper were over, Hermia sat with him awhile up-stairs in her aunt’s boudoir.