Eweretta had not been in any sense critical. Aimée Le Breton was critical. Eweretta had been frankly outspoken; this girl was wrapped about with reserve. The thing that puzzled him most in her was her intelligence. It seemed impossible that she could ever have been mentally deficient.
Dan looked in at the bungalow always on his way home from the White House, and his extravagant admiration for Aimée Le Breton left no room for anxiety in Philip’s mind lest Dan, thrown as he was so constantly with Phyllis, should begin to care for her in a way not allowable.
Phyllis rode over on her cycle to pour forth complaints into Philip’s ear, and to weep, and call herself hard names, reserving even harder ones for Captain Arbuthnot for having consented to the proposal to be married secretly.
Philip rated and petted the girl by turns.
One thing he insisted upon, and that was that she should, under his eye and direction, write affectionately to her husband.
“You can’t want to be so cruel as to make him suffer more, when he is having such a hard time already,” Philip told her. “You have made him marry you, and you’ve just got to make the best of it.”
“And I—I breaking my heart all the time because I have found the man I could love too late!”
“Breaking your fiddle-sticks!” said Philip with irony. “Your heart isn’t worth calling a heart! But you’ve got a head, and I recommend you to use it. Believe me, love is an infantile ailment like measles, and when you’ve had it you’re immune. In my opinion you have never had it at all, but will be immune all the same.”
“That is just as good as calling me shallow and heartless,” said Phyllis resentfully.
“No,” rejoined Philip reflectively. “You are sowing your wild oats after a feminine fashion, that is all. Possibly—mind, I say possibly—you will grow what they call a heart some time, and that husband of yours shall know nothing of the interval between if I can prevent it.”