“Surely I know that you are one of the kindest-hearted little women in the world!” said Diana. “And your wealthy old bachelor uncle never did a wiser thing than when he left you two thousand a year! Why you remain single I can never understand!”
“That’s because you are a sentimental goose!” declared Sophy. “If you were worldly wise you would see that it’s just that two thousand that does it! The men who propose to me—and there are a good few of them!—want the two thousand first, and me afterwards! Or rather, let us say, some of them would be glad of the two thousand without me altogether! All the nonsense in poetry books about love and dove, and sigh and die, and moon and spoon doesn’t count! I’ve lived till I’m thirty-five and I’ve never met a man yet who was worth a trickle of a tear! They are all sensualists and money-grubbers,—polygamous as monkeys!—and the only thing to be done with them is to make them work to keep the world going, though even that seems little use sometimes.”
“Sophy dear, are you becoming a pessimist?” asked Diana, half smiling. “Surely it is a beautiful world!”
“Yes—it’s beautiful in a natural way—but the artificiality of human life in it is depressing and disgusting! Don’t let us talk of it!—tell me why you are going abroad? What are your plans?”
Diana took a neat leather case from her pocket and drew out of it a folded slip of paper.
“You sent me that!” she said.
“That advertisement!” she exclaimed. “The man who wants ‘Any woman alone in the world, without claims on her time or her affections’? Oh, Diana! You don’t mean it! You’re not really going on such a wild-goose chase?”
“What harm can it do?” said Diana, quietly. “I’m old enough to take care of myself. And I fulfil all the requirements. I am a woman of mature years—I’m courageous and determined, and I have a fair knowledge of modern science. I’m well educated, especially in ‘languages and literature,’ thanks to my solitary studies,—and as I’ve nothing to look forward to in the world I’m not afraid to take risks. It really seems the very sort of thing for me! At any rate I can but go and present myself, as suggested, ‘personally and alone’ to this Dr. Dimitrius at Geneva,—and if he turns out an impostor, well!—Geneva isn’t the worst of places, and I’m sure I could find something to do as a teacher of music, or a ‘companion housekeeper.’ In any case I’m determined to go there and investigate things for myself,—and whatever money you are good enough to lend me, dear Sophy, be sure I’ll never rest till I pay you back every penny!”
Sophy threw an embracing arm round her and kissed her.
“If you never paid me back a farthing I shouldn’t mind!” she said, laughing. “Dear Di, I’m not one of those ‘friends’ who measure love by money! Money and the passion for acquiring it make more than half the hypocrisy, cruelty and selfishness of the age. But all the same I’m not quite sure that I approve of this plan of yours——”