“Really. I never can bring myself to believe in warmed-over magic.”
“Then I shall never have any such moods.”
He answered a phone call and there fell upon the office an atmosphere of strange peace which had been missing for many months.
During the winter the rift between Steve and Beatrice became noticeable even to the Gorgeous Girl’s friends, to Trudy’s infinite delight; and by the time spring came it was an accepted thing that Steve’s share in the scheme of things was to write checks and occupy as little space as possible in the apartment, whereas Beatrice’s part in the scheme of things was to badger and nag at her husband eternally or be frigidly polite and civil, which was far harder to endure than her temper.
The Gorgeous Girl’s endeavours to become an advanced woman, an intellectual patroness and so on, were amusing and ineffectual. She soon found neither pleasure nor satisfaction in any of her near-lions. Nor did she succeed in making them roar. Whether it was a parlour lecture on Did a Chinese Monk Visit America a Thousand Years before Columbus? or a Baby Party at which Beatrice and Gay dressed as twins and were wheeled about in a white pram by Trudy, dressed as a French bonne––the reaction was one of depression and defeat. Though Beatrice still had her name printed on the reports of charity committees she no longer took what was termed an active part. She shrugged her shoulders carelessly and gave the reason that it was all so hopeless––and no fun at all.
Inanimate things afforded the most satisfaction; at least she could buy an individual breakfast service costing a thousand dollars and have the item recorded in all the fashion journals, with her photograph, and she could have the most unique dinner favours and the smartest frocks, and they never disappointed her.
Besides, the Italian villa was to be finished shortly and that would necessitate a new round of entertainments and minor adjustments and no end of enviable publicity and comment. This diversion would take her through the late spring and summer, and in the fall she fully intended to take up dress reform and become a feminist. She had an idea of wearing nothing but draped Grecian robes––which could be made to look quite fetching if one had enough jewellery to punctuate the drapes––and of going in for barefoot dancing on the lawn. It would be more convenient if she could persuade her 204 father and aunt not to stay on at the Villa Rosa, as it was to be called. And certainly it would have been more æsthetic to look across the street and see something besides another expensive and hopelessly mediocre brick house which another rich man somewhat after Constantine’s own heart had built with pride and joy. She wished she had bought a site back from the town and created a real estate. The fact that she had not done so made her miserable for over a week, during which Gay consoled her in most flattering fashion, neglecting his own wife to do so.
Well, after the Villa Rosa––what then? Life seemed very empty. With a certain natural squareness of nature Beatrice was not the sort of woman to indulge in unwise affairs beyond a certain discreet point. She had never learned how to study, so she could not become a devotee of some fascinating and exacting subject. Her really keen mind had merely skimmed through her studies.
Nor was she over fond of children. As she told Trudy, children were absorbing things and goodness knew if she ever had any of her own she would have a wonderful enough nursery and sun parlour with panels designed by a child psychologist; there was everything in first impressions. But take care of one of them? The actual responsibility? Heavens, what a fate! She would engage a trained baby nurse––and then drop in at the nursery for a few moments each day to see that everything was going well.