"My wits are in my brain, not my heart."
"Mr. Howard?"
"He has so much tact that he has no sincerity."
"There is still Mr. Webster."
"Poor Dolly!"
"What do you want?"
Helena was moving restlessly about her boudoir,—a bower of pearl-grey embroidered with wild roses, in which she reclined luxuriously when free from social duties, and improved her mind. A volume of Motley lay on the floor. Walter Pater's "Imaginary Portraits" was slipping off the divan, and there was a pile of Reviews on the table. She was biting the corner of a volume of Herrick.
"I haven't any ideal, if that's what you mean. I think it would have to be a man of the world, for conversation so soon gives out with the men of this village. Mr. Fort takes refuge in epigrams. If I married—became engaged to him—I should feel as if I were living on pickles. I think that one reason why Alan Rush and Mr. Howard are so determined to make love to me is because they have nothing left to talk about."
"You've told me twice what you don't want, but you don't seem to know what you do. 'A man of the world' is not very definite."
"No; he must be capable of falling violently in love with me, and at the same time not make himself ridiculous; to keep his head except when I particularly want him to lose it. Of course I want to inspire a grand passion as well as to feel one, but I don't want to be surrounded by it; and the first time he looked ridiculous would be the last of him as far as I was concerned. I might be in the highest stages of the divine passion, and that would cure me."