“Nevertheless,” Basil said, frowning, “if you had something agreeable to say, you wouldn’t need half a dozen personal interviews to do so. It is first impressions that count.”
“Not a bit of it!” Salvières contradicted. “Were you to ask my opinion of a passer-by—Lord, I hope there is nobody around”—he interrupted himself, glancing at his pipe with mock apprehension—“I would satisfy your curiosity at once; but when it comes to passing judgment upon so considerable a personage as the Princess Basil Palitzin, my sister-in-law and your wife, words become momentous; although this does not exclude my assuring you that I found her interesting beyond all expression!”
Basil, who was smoking a cigarette—a dainty Russian affair all white and gold, and long, hard mouthpiece—brusquely threw it into an ash-tray.
“I am glad you found her interesting,” he put in, with averted eyes, “but there are a good many ways of being interesting. Why don’t you speak out? Surely it is natural for me to ask you how you like my wife!”
Salvières sat suddenly up, drew his long legs under him tailor fashion, and stared at his friend and brother, rocking softly backward and forward as he did so.
“My dear boy,” he said at last, “of course it is natural, but I cannot understand why you seem so worried about my opinion. I have just told you that I find your wife both surpassingly beautiful and extremely interesting. What more can I say à première vue?”
Basil took a fresh cigarette, lighted it from the still burning stump on the tray, and gazed for a moment at the ends of his pumps, as though noticing something amiss with those irreproachable articles of footwear.
“Do you think,” he suddenly asked, with apparent irrelevance, “that perhaps I did a foolish, an unwise, or even a cruel thing in separating her from her friends, her country, her pleasures, and in bringing her to live at Tverna?”
“A woman shall forsake her family, her land, and her own surroundings, to cleave to her husband, quoth Holy Scripture!” Salvières pronounced, severely.
“It does nothing of the kind! It is the other way about. It is the husband who is particularly mentioned,” Basil contradicted, unable to repress a smile.