The Younger shrugged his shoulders.
“At any rate she won’t stay jeune forever. And what is she now, compared to what she would become? She is nobody, whereas my wife——” A handsome gesture left the Younger to figure that personage. “Then she evidently finds the attractions of this country superior to the rather problematical ones—if you will pardon me!—of her own. She says every day she is going, but she never goes.”
“Well, she is at least free to go. And you must remember that America is gilded with the associations of an unbitted youth. There is but an open door between her and an iridescent dream. When Europe has no more to offer her champing spirit she has but to step back into that happy hunting-ground of the jeune fille. Whereas with you—the door would close behind her.”
The Elder put this from him with a twist of head and hand. “Excuse me, caro mio, if I seem to allude to personal matters. But you will remember that at Viareggio, that first time, you attributed something of your own coolness to—to the fact——”
“Of being a pauper?” filled out the Younger cheerfully. “Yes.”
“Well, if I must say it, she could do much worse than to marry me. Doesn’t she know?”
“That is true,” admitted the Younger, studying his nails anew. From another these facts somehow came with less grace. So he contented himself with adding: “But she might also do better.”
“How?” interrogated the Elder, turning savagely upon him. “What more, I ask you, can a respectable girl want? In God’s name, what more?”
The Younger suddenly knew that he approved enough of Susannah’s discernment to suspend judgment upon her bad taste.
“Perhaps what you call ‘respectability,’ for one thing,” he suggested. “And for another——” He pulled up. “Yet she has that already. So why should she want it?”