“I don’t remember having made any experiments,” said Philip, rather awkwardly.
“Well, it is hardly worth remembering,” she rejoined with one of her ambiguous smiles. “If we remembered everything we should never do anything, probably; and that may be one reason why women do so little. And so you are married, Philip?”
“Yes,” he said, a little reluctant to follow up this turn of the conversation.
“What a delightful thing a true marriage must be,” she went on, “especially when a poet is the bridegroom. For he must know, better than any other man, what woman to choose. You have seen the world, my friend, and studied the human heart; and I congratulate you on having found the woman best suited to make you happy.”
“I’m not so difficult as you seem to think,” returned Philip; “but if I were ten times more so than I am, I should be more than content.”
“I am sure of that,” said Perdita, smiling again; “if all men were as fortunate as you, mon ami, the world would be the happier. Marion is a poet’s wife. She comprehends you. She reverences your genius even more than you do, and she will do more than your genius to make you illustrious. She has the simplicity and the unsuspiciousness that one finds only in the highest natures; she will never harass you with foolish doubts and questions: she will never do anything whimsical or arbitrary: she will never make you appear absurd. She makes me wish that I were like her.”
Perdita uttered the last sentences in a low and serious tone. She was looking her loveliest; fit to be the consort of a king or the heroine of an epic. She was warm, exquisite, tinted like a flower and sparkling like the gems upon her bosom; she had all the grace of a woman, and more than a woman’s substance and individuality, and she was telling Philip that she wished she were like his wife! Philip, though not exactly destitute of vanity or of liability to infatuation, was not readily to be deceived. He was quite able to believe that Perdita might be making game of him. And yet, hearing the tones of her voice and looking in her face, he did not believe it. Her words, indeed, could be taken with more than one signification; but there must be genuineness in them somewhere. She wished that she were like Philip’s wife. Did that mean that she really considered Marion’s qualities of mind and person were more desirable than her own? Or did she mean that there was some cause, unavowed but not unimaginable, why she should desire them more? Some cause not unimaginable: what? She had just expressed her conviction, in tones unusually earnest for an assemblage like Lady Flanders’, that Marion’s qualities were such as must command Philip’s love. What then was the significance of her wishing they might be hers? It was plain enough; indeed it was its very plainness that was the strongest obstacle in the way of Philip’s so understanding it. And yet, thorough as was his love for Marion, he recognized too clearly the wonderful charms and fascinations of Perdita to believe that she could compare herself with his wife to her own disadvantage. No: what she had said was, at least, an implicit censure of his blindness in having preferred Marion or any other woman to Perdita herself.
It is to Philip’s credit that he did not allow himself to appear in the least conscious of the unavoidable inference in the matter; but only laughed, and said that he had no doubt any one would like his wife better than his poetry, if they could be afforded the opportunity. And before anything else could be said, who should appear before them but Marion herself, leaning on Merton Fillmore’s arm, looking very pale, and with a peculiar satirical touch to her expression which Philip had not seen there since the early days of his acquaintance with her, and which made him a little uneasy. As for Fillmore, his demeanor was, as usual, admirably composed; but Philip fancied that there was something in the glance he bestowed upon him that seemed to say, “Can a honeymoon be eclipsed?”
“Good evening, Madame Desmoines,” said Marion, lightly; “I hope I see you well in health? Do you like my husband?”
“His poetry has made me rather disappointed with himself; but he is all the better for having such a wife,” returned the Marquise, with engaging courtesy.