"Isn't this new?" she asked. "I seem never to have seen this one before. It's quite wonderful."
The old gentleman looked down at it with the pride of a little girl over her first party frock. He came as near simpering as a fierce person of eighty-six, with a square white beard, can come.
"Rather good--what? What?" said he. "Yes, it's new. De Vries sent it me. It is my best one. Imperial yellow. Did you notice the little Show medallions with the swastika? Young Ste. Marie was here this afternoon." He introduced the name with no pause or change of expression, as if Ste. Marie were a part of the decoration of the mandarin's jacket. "I told him he was a damned fool."
"Yes," said Miss Benham, "I know. He said you did. I suppose," she said, "that in a sort of very informal fashion I am engaged to him. Well, no, perhaps not quite that; but he seems to consider himself engaged to me, and when he has finished something very important that he has undertaken to do he is coming to ask me definitely to marry him. No, I suppose we aren't engaged yet; at least, I'm not. But it's almost the same, because I suppose I shall accept him whether he fails or succeeds in what he is doing."
"If he fails in it, whatever it may be," said old David, "he won't give you a chance to accept him; he won't come back. I know him well enough for that. He's a romantic fool, but he's a thoroughgoing fool. He plays the game." The old man looked up to his granddaughter, scowling a little. "You two are absurdly unsuited to each other," said he, "and I told Ste. Marie so. I suppose you think you're in love with him."
"Yes," said the girl, "I suppose I do."
"Idleness and all? You were rather severe on idleness at one time."
"He isn't idle any more," said she. "He has undertaken--of his own accord--to find Arthur. He has some theory about it; and he is not going to see me again until he has succeeded--or until a year is past. If he fails, I fancy he won't come back."
Old David gave a sudden hoarse exclamation, and his withered hands shook and stirred before him. Afterward he fell to half-inarticulate muttering.
"The young romantic fool!--Don Quixote--like all the rest of them--those Ste. Maries. The fool and the angels. The angels and the fool."