“Ah, then I can well believe that it is charming.”
“Mr. Heigham, you are paying compliments. I thought that you looked above that sort of thing.”
“In the presence of misfortune and of beauty”—here he bowed—“all men are reduced to the same level. Talk to me from behind a curtain, or let me turn my back upon you, and you may expect to hear work-a-day prose—but face to face, I fear that you must put up with compliment.”
“A neat way of saying that you have had enough of me. Your compliments are two-edged. Good-bye for the present.” And she rose, leaving Arthur —well, rather amused.
After this they saw a good deal of each other—that is to say, they conversed together for at least thirty minutes out of every sixty during an average day of fourteen hours, and in the course of these conversations she learned nearly everything about him, except his engagement to Angela, and she shrewdly guessed at that, or, rather, at some kindred circumstance in his career. Arthur, on the other hand, learned quite everything about her, for her life was open as the day, and would have borne repeating in the Times newspaper. But nevertheless he found it extremely interesting.
“You must be a busy woman,” he said one morning, when he had been listening to one of her rattling accounts of her travels and gaieties, sprinkled over, as it was, with the shrewd remarks, and illumined by the keen insight into character that made her talk so charming.
“Busy, no; one of the idlest in the world, and a very worthless one to boot,” she answered, with a little sigh.
“Then, why don’t you change your life? it is in your own hands, if ever anybody’s was.”
“Do you think so? I doubt if anybody’s life is in their own hands. We follow an appointed course; if we did not, it would be impossible to understand why so many sensible, clever people make such a complete mess of their existence. They can’t do it from choice.”
“At any rate, you have not made a mess of yours, and your appointed course seems a very pleasant one.”