"Flighty creature?" Adrian levelled eyes black with reproach upon him. Then turning to the ladies: "That shows how he misunderstands me. Just because I had a witty mother,—just because I 'm not a stolid, phlegmatic ox of a John Bull,—just because I 'm sensitive and impressionable,—he calls me flighty. But you know better, don't you? You, with all your fine feminine instincts and perceptions, you know that I 'm really as steady and as serious as the pyramids of Egypt. Even my very jokes have a moral purpose—and what I teach in them, I learned in sorrow. Flighty!" He shot another black glance at the offender, and held out his cup for a third filling.
"Blessings be on the man who invented tea," he devoutly murmured. "On Friday especially"—he appealed to Susanna—"is n't it a boon? I don't know how one could get through Friday without it. You poor dear fortunate Protestants"—he directed his remark to Miss Sandus—"have no conception how frequently Friday comes. I think there are seven Fridays in the week."
Susanna was softly laughing, where (in that wonderful, crisp, fresh, close-fitting, blue-grey gown, with its frills and laces and embroideries) she sat in the corner of a long, red-damask-covered sofa, by the prettily decked tea-table. Anthony, standing near her, looking down at her, was conscious of a great content in his heart, and of a great craving. "How splendid she is. Was there ever such hair? Were there ever such eyes, such lips? Was there ever such a frock? And then that faint, faint, faintest perfume, like a remembrance of violets!" I daresay something to this effect was vaguely singing itself to his thoughts.
"But the experience of your life? The experience of your life?" Miss
Sandus insisted.
"He's clean forgotten it," Anthony assured her.
"Forgotten it? Tush," Adrian flung back, with scorn. "But you 're all so precipitate. One has to collect one's faculties. There are fifty possible ways of telling a thing—one must select the most effective. And then, if you come to that, life has so many experiences, and so many different sorts of experience. Life, to the man with an open eye, is just one sequence of many-coloured astonishments. I never could and never shall understand how it is possible for people to be bored. What do you say "—he looked towards the piano—"to my singing you a little song?"
"You 're inimitable—but you 're inimitably exasperating." Miss Sandus gave him up, with a resigned toss of the head.
"Do sing us a little song," Susanna begged.
He set off, dancing, in the direction of the instrument. But midway there he stopped, and half turned round, poising, as it were, in his flight.
"Grave or gay? Sacred or profane?" he asked from over his shoulder.