The hot color deepened in the young woman's face, and she picked up her needlework again quickly.
"I—insincere?" she asked. "Is not that precisely why you find me slightly vexatious, my dear Mr. Savage, that I am only too sincere, a veritable model of sincerity?"
And she rose, gracious, smiling, to receive another guest.
"Ah! ma toute belle, how are you, and how is the poor, darling mother? Better? Thank God for that! But still in her room? Dear! dear! Yet, after all, what can one expect? In such weather convalescence must necessarily be protracted. I am forced to come and ask for news in person since you refuse to have a telephone. Just consider the many annoying intrusions, such as the present, which that useful instrument would spare you!"
Anastasia Beauchamp, overdressed and genial as ever, interspersed these remarks with the unwinding of voluminous fox furs, all heads and tails and feebly dangling paws, the kissing of her hostess on either cheek, and finally a hand-shake to Adrian.
"So you are restored to us, my dear Savage," she continued. "I am more than delighted to see you, though at this moment I am well aware that delight is not reciprocated.—There, there, it is superfluous to perjure yourself by a denial.—And you are back just in time to write a scathing criticism of your protégé M. Dax's exhibition, in the Review. Here is matter for sincere congratulation, for, believe me, very plain speaking is demanded. The newspapers are afraid of him. They cringe. Their pusillanimity is disgusting. Really this time he has broken his own record! It is just these things which create a wrong impression and bring France into bad odor with other nations. He is a traitor to the best traditions of the art of this country. I deplore it from that point of view. His exhibition is a scandal. The correctional police should step in."
"You have yourself visited the exhibition, dear Anastasia?" Madame St. Leger inquired, demurely.
"Naturally, I have been to see it. Don't I see everything which is going? Isn't that my acknowledged little hobby, my dear? Then, too, where does the benefit of increasing age come in unless you claim the privileges of indiscretion conferred by it? Still, even in senile indiscretion, one should observe a decent limit. I went alone, absolutely alone, to inspect those abominable productions. I wore a thick veil, too, and—I blushed behind it. Needless to relate, I now and then quivered with laughter. One is but human after all, and to be human is also to be diverted by impropriety. But I could have whipped myself for laughing, even though quite alone and behind the veil. Go and judge for yourself whether I am not justified in my disgust, my dear Savage. And as for you, ma toute belle, do not, I implore you, go at all—unless you have had the misfortune to do so already—even though going would effectually cure you of any kindness you may entertain toward the artist—an end, in my poor opinion, greatly to be desired."
"I have not seen M. Dax's exhibition, nor have I seen M. Dax himself for some length of time," Gabrielle remarked, quietly.
"You have dropped him? I rejoice to hear it. A man of so villainous an imagination is unfit to approach you."