She stopped with another laugh that had a faintly suggestive ring in it. "There are times when I wish I was somebody else who hadn't a penny!"
"But it can't be nice to be poor," said Muriel, looking at her with a trace of bewilderment in her big blue eyes.
"It is probably distinctly unpleasant. Still, it would be consoling to feel that your money could neither encourage nor prevent anybody you liked falling in love with you, and it would, in one sense, be nice to know that the man you graciously approved of would have to get whatever you wanted for you. You ought to understand that."
There was a trace of pride in Muriel's smile. "Of course; but, after all, there are not many men who can do almost anything, like—Harry Jefferson. Some of the very nicest ones seem quite unable to make money."
"I really don't think there are," and Jacinta's tone was, for no very apparent reason, slightly different now. "The nicest ones are, as you suggest, usually lazy. It's sad, but true. Still, you see, if ever I married, my husband would have to shake off his slothfulness and do something worth while."
"But he mightn't want to."
"Of course," said Jacinta, drily. "He probably wouldn't. Still, he would have to. I should make him."
"Ah," said Muriel. "Do you know that you are just a little hard, and I think when one is too hard one is generally sorry afterwards. Now, I don't understand it all, but you once told me you had got something you wished for done, and were sorry you had. I fancied you were even sorrier than you wished me to know."
Jacinta sat silent a moment or two, with a curious expression in her face, as she looked out across the clustered roofs towards the sparkling sea. It was a custom she had fallen into lately, and it was always towards the east she gazed. Then she smiled.
"Well," she said, "perhaps I was, but it was certainly very silly of me."