"Perhaps not unspeakably immoral," she said, "but immoral—yes, I think you're that. Of course, there are many different conceptions of immorality, and mine may be unique. Let us come back to my parable. What I mean is this. You were born with every natural good fortune, and your breeding and education secure to you every social advantage which one could possibly desire. You've been placed, like the sea-urchins or the starfish, in a situation preëminently befitting you. You're American in every detail of your sane, clean make-up, my friend, and you've been given America, the sanest, cleanest country on God's globe, in which to develop and achieve. Might one ask what you're doing over here? Getting a finish?—that's what it's called, isn't it? Allowing yourself, that is to say, to be tied up with the baby-ribbon and decorated with the gilt paint of Parisian frivolity! And when you go back—if you ever do—to live in America, what will you be? 'A Souvenir of Paris,' my good sir, 'A Present from the Invalides,' as undeniably as if somebody had lettered the words on your forehead in ornamental script, and pasted a photograph of Napoleon's tomb on your shirt-bosom. That's what I call immoral. I like you better as an American; I like you better with the sheen of the salt water on you; I like you better in your element, Mr. Andrew Vane!"
"I never heard anything better in the way of a sermon," said Andrew, groping for an answer.
"It's too true to be good," retorted Mrs. Carnby. "Do you believe any of it?"
"Some, perhaps—not all. And the whole attack is a litle abrupt. What have I been doing?"
"Nothing! You've hit upon precisely the objection. 'Tekel!—thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting!' Margery Palffy is like my own daughter to me, Mr. Vane. She calls me her fairy godmother, you know. Are you looking forward to introducing her to Mirabelle Tremonceau?"
Mrs. Carnby was once more contemplating the forest foliage overhead. For the second time in fifteen minutes, her instinct for distinguishing the line which separates the boldly effective from the futilely impertinent was standing her in good stead. As a matter of fact, Andrew had not been weighed in the balances—but he was just about to be!
The forest was all alive with the lisp of leaves, and the shifting dapple of sunlight and shadow, and, even as she waited, Mrs. Carnby smiled quietly to herself, in pure enjoyment of the great Gothic arches of green, that seemed to thrill and shiver with delight under the warm sunlight and the fresh west wind. The forest, like the sea, has in its every mood a magnificent dignity of its own—a superb indifference to the transitory doings of man, which dwarfs human affairs to an aspect of utter triviality. The world which Mrs. Carnby knew, and toward which her attitude was alternately one of keen appreciation and of good-natured contempt—the world of fashion and frivolity and easy cynicism, seemed, as she contrasted it with this vast serenity, to become incomparably little. The suggestion of endurance and repose with which these shadowy reaches, opening to right and left, were eloquent, lent a curious contemptible tawdriness to the little comedy, so conceivably potential tragedy, in which she and the man beside her were playing each a part. How little difference it made, after all, if men were fools or blackguards, and women wantons or martyrs! For a moment she was sorry she had spoken. She felt that here and now she could not quarrel, or even dispute, with Andrew over what he chose to do. The intrusion of intrigue and dissipation into these forest fastnesses was hideously incongruous.
"There's cruelty in what you have said, but I can see that it's not wanton cruelty, and that there's kindness as well."
Andrew was speaking slowly, thoughtfully; almost, thought Mrs. Carnby to herself, as if he, too, had been touched by the softening sympathy of the forest. But she shook off the mood which had been stealing over her, as being wholly inadequate to the demand upon her fund of resource. What was needed, far from being the influence of elemental nature, was the keenest, if most worldly, diplomacy of which she was mistress. She straightened herself, and began to put on her gloves, working the fingers with the patient care of one who understood that, with a glove above all things, it is le premier pas qui coute. Inwardly she was keying taut the strings of her self-possession. She realized that emotion would be as fatal to her purpose as would sheer frivolity.
"Under your words," continued Andrew, "I can see that there must lie a more or less intimate knowledge of many things which we have never mentioned—many things which I did not suppose you would ever—"