“Might, Leonora? But you will, must, can’t help but! With your beauty, youth, wealth.”
“Thank you. I have often noticed that one’s friends like one best as one is leaving them. Then, Maximilian, shall I divorce you?”
“If you please, dear. My lawyers are Messrs. Onward & Christian. They will arrange the matter with yours in the usual way.”
“Remember, dear, that your King will not receive a divorced Duke at court.”
“The King can do no wrong,” yawned the Duke. “It must be rather hard on him sometimes, but the law is the law.”
His eyes were closed against her beauty, else he had seen the sudden smile that touched her beauty, touched it and was going, going, lurked a while in the depths of her eyes like a very small bird in the ferns of love-in-the-mist, and lo! was gone. She said softly: “You are such a baby, Max!”
Seamen passed by, bearing a great leather Innovation trunk to the side. A black cloud rose up from Africa and hid the sun. A shadow walked across the pretty town of Cannes and drove the youth from painted faces.
“And because,” said the young Duchess wistfully, “you are such a baby, I don’t put it beyond you to make love to my sister if you should meet her. She has always been jealous of me, so she would enjoy nothing so much as your making love to her. Promise not to, Max, please, oh, please! She has just come over to Paris, so I read this morning in The New York Herald. Max, promise not to make a fool of me to my own sister!”
“She’s pretty?”
“Pretty? Are words so scarce, sir, that you must use a copper coin? And she my twin!”