‘Then why didn’t she marry Darlington?’ inquired Sprats.
‘Because she married me,’ answered Lucian. ‘She gave up the millionaire for the struggling poet, as you might put it if you were writing a penny-dreadful. No; seriously, Sprats, I think there’s a good deal due to Haidee in that respect. I think she is really easily contented. When you come to think of it, we are not extravagant—we like pretty things and comfortable surroundings, but when you think of what some people do——’
‘Oh, you’re hopeless, Lucian!’ she said. ‘I wish you’d been sent out to earn your living at fifteen. Honour bright—you’re living in a world of dreams, and you’ll have a nasty awakening some day.’
‘I have given the outer world something of value from my world of dreams,’ he said, smiling at her.
‘You have written some very beautiful poetry, and you are a marvellously gifted man who ought to feel the responsibility of your gifts,’ she said gravely. ‘And all I want is to keep you, if I can, from the rocks on which you might come to grief. I’m sure that if you took my advice about business matters you would avoid trouble in the future. You’re too cock-sure, too easy-going, too thoughtless, Lucian, and this is a hard and a cruel world.’
‘It’s been a very pleasant world to me so far,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had a care or a trouble; I’ve heaps of friends, and I’ve always got everything that I wanted. Why, it’s a very pleasant world! You, Sprats, have found it so, too.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I have found it pleasant, but it is hard and cruel nevertheless, and one realises it sometimes when one least expects to. One may wake out of a dream to a very cruel reality.’
‘You speak as of a personal experience,’ he said smiling. ‘And yet I swear you never had one.’
‘I don’t want you to have one,’ she answered.
‘Is sermonising a cruel reality?’ he asked with a mock grimace.