“You wouldn't, you know,” he told her with the same sympathetic earnestness. “There was too much of a row. He was cut all to pieces. I thought he'd go under; but he's not that sort. Who called somebody—some political johnny—the Sea-green Incorruptible? Oh, ask me another! You might call old Senhouse the Green-tea Irrepressible; for that was his drink (to keep himself awake all night, writin' poems), and there never was a cork that would hold him down—not even Sancie Percival. No, no, out he must come—fizzling.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Germain, still looking at her fingers in her lap. “I'm very much interested. You mean that he was very much—that he paid her a great deal of attention?”
Chevenix stared roundly about him. “Attention! Oh, heavens! Why, three of his letters to her would fill The Times for a week—and he kept it up for years! She used to get three a week—budgets! blue-books! For simple years! Attentions!” He shook his head. “The word's no good. He paid nobody anything at all when she was in the same county. He used to sit listening to her thrilling the waves of air. He used to hear her voice in the wind—and when it changed, he used to fire off his answers!”
Mrs. Germain laughed—whether at Chevenix or his preposterous hero is not to be known. “You are rather absurd,” she said. “Mr. Senhouse never gave me the idea of that sort of person. Why did they never—?”
Chevenix narrowed his eyes to the merest slats. “Marry?” he said, in an awed whisper. “Is that what you mean?”
Mrs. Germain showed him her soft brown orbs, which for two seasons had been said to be the finest pair of dark eyes in London. “Yes,” she said, “I do mean that. How clever of you to guess!”
Chevenix bowed to her. “Not at all,” he said. “I'm quite good at that kind of thing. You have to be, if you knock about. Besides, that's the whole point. Bless you! He would just as soon have married Diana of the Ephesians. He said so. I heard him. He would have thought it an insult to hint at it. Didn't I tell you that he was a poet?”
“Yes,” the lady said quickly. “You did. But I suppose poets occasionally marry.”
“Not that sort,” Chevenix pronounced, with a shake of the head. “At least, they don't marry the right person. They never do. Or there are two or three persons. Look at Shelley. Look at Dante. I happen to know all about both of 'em. Senhouse drank 'em up—and gave 'em out like steam. He thought no end of Dante and Shelley. As a matter of fact, he didn't believe in marriage, as a game—as a kind of institution, you know. He thought it devilish wrong—and said so—and that's where the trouble was. Marry Sancie! I wish to heaven he had. There'd have been no trouble at all. They were made for each other. She loved his fun—and was easy with him, you see. She was queerish, too—a shy young bird; but she was quite at home with him. No, no. The trouble really began with him putting her out of conceit with marriage. And then she didn't care for him in that sort of way, then. And then—well, the less said the better.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Germain, absorbed by the devolutions of the tale. “Oh!”