"In a measure, yes; but their plans were submitted for your approval. I was just wondering whether your imagination was vivid enough to have dreamed half the splendours of such a life when you turned from the little cottage I built for you."
A look of pain clouded the fair face and she lifted her jewelled hand.
"Please, Jim, I'd like to forget some things."
"And you haven't forgotten?"
She looked straight into his eyes and answered in even tones.
"No."
He studied the magnificent pearl necklace that circled her throat. Its purchase had made a sensation in New York. The papers were full of it at the time Bivens had bought it at an auction in Paris, bidding successfully against the agents of the Tzar of Russia. Never had he seen Nan so ravishing. Magnificent gowns, soft laces, and jewelry were made to be worn by such women. There was an eternal fitness in the whole scheme of things in which this glorious creature of the senses lived and moved and had her being.
"I suppose," he began musingly, "I ought, as a patriotic citizen of the Republic, to condemn the enormous waste of wealth you have made here to-night."
"Yes," she answered quietly.
"I ought to tell you how many tears you could wipe away with it, how much suffering you could soften, how many young lives you could save from misery and shame, how many of life's sunsets you could have turned from darkness into the glory of quiet joy; and yet, somehow, I can find nothing in my heart to say except that I've been living in a fairyland of beauty and enchantment. What curious contradictions these hearts of ours lead us into sometimes—don't they?"