“Oh, dear!” cried Claudia suddenly. “If he only had money! I’d adore beyond all things to be worshipped on a pedestal! Rupert, if an old aunt dies, and leaves you her millions,—would I do?”
That was the best of Claudia, her prattle bridged so many awkward gaps! In an instant the tension had eased, and a general laugh broke the silence. Rupert laughed with the rest, no whit embarrassed by the question.
“Not at all, Beauty,” he said calmly. “I need a great passion in return, and you are incapable of it. Most women are! I doubt if in the whole course of my life I have met one who could rise to it,” and he cast a quick glance round the group until his eyes met those of his hostess.
“Very few men would understand what you are talking about, or, if they did, would desire so demanding a romance,” Mrs Ingram told him. “The man who does will find his mate, but—he must pay the price! So we have come to Love at last! I thought it would have taken an earlier place.”
“Mrs Ingram,” cried Claudia boldly, “was that what you wished for yourself? You told us you had proved your own theories. Did you wish for love?”
“No!” said the hostess quietly. “It was not love.” She glanced across the hearth as she spoke, and her eyes and her husband’s met, and exchanged a message.
The man with the magnetic eyes burst hastily into the conversation, as if anxious to divert attention to himself.
“I suppose I come next? I’ve been questioning myself while you’ve all been talking. It’s difficult to condense one’s ambitions into just one word, but I’ve got it at last—or the one which most nearly expresses what I mean. Danger! That’s it. That’s what I want. I’m fed up with monotony, and convention, and civilisation, but I go a step farther than Miss Juliet, for I demand, so to speak, the superlative of adventure. Risk, uncertainty, the thrill, the fear! I want to take my life in my hands, to get out into the open of life, and come face to face with the unknown. Put me down as ‘Danger,’ Mrs Ingram, and when you think over all the wishes, mine really seems the easiest of fulfilment. There’s plenty of trouble knocking around, and a man need not have far to search. I think, on the whole, I’ll absolve my friends from that promise to help! It might land them in disagreeable consequences!”
“But are we expected to wish you good luck? It really is an invidious position!” cried the girl in blue. She sighed, and twisted her fingers together in her lap.
“It’s coming to my turn,” she continued, “and I’m so horribly embarrassed, for my confession sounds the most selfish of all: I want just to be happy! That’s all! But it means so much, and it’s such a difficult thing to accomplish. Don’t anyone dare to tell me that it’s in my own power, and must be manufactured inside, because I’ve heard it so often, and it’s not true! I need outside things, and I can’t be happy till I get them. But I only want them so that I can be happy, and I’d give them up in a minute if other things would have the same effect. Don’t I express myself lucidly and well? I’m a sweet, tender-hearted little girl, dear friends, and I ask for so little! Kind contributions gratefully received. Mrs Ingram dear, you won’t preach, will you?”