"What a bourgeois point of view! Well, honestly—I don't know. Arthur Coryston is not at all clever. He has the most absurd opinions. We have only known each other a few months. If he were very rich—By the way, is he coming this afternoon? And may I have a cigarette?"
Marion handed cigarettes. The click of a garden gate in the distance caught her ear.
"Here they are—he and Lord Coryston."
Enid Glenwilliam lit her cigarette, and made no move. Her slender, long-limbed body, as it lay at ease in the deep garden chair, the pale masses of her hair, and the confident quiet face beneath it, made a charming impression of graceful repose. As Arthur Coryston reached her she held out a welcoming hand, and her eyes greeted him—a gay, significant look.
Coryston, having shaken hands with Miss Atherstone, hastily approached her companion.
"I didn't know you smoked," he said, abruptly, standing before her with his hands on his sides.
As always, Coryston made an odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered him with a smile.
"Mayn't I?"
He looked down on her, frowning.
"Why should women set up a new want—a new slavery—that costs money?"