“There are so many openings for a perambulating conscience! Those canaille! I am sure his frigid countenance spoils your appetite; it would spoil mine—and you eat like a Trappist monk. Is that Scots too?”
“Gluttony is the one aristocratic vice to which I could never become accustomed,” he replied. “I was—I was once, as many here to-night would think, quite poor!”
She started slightly, looked incredulous. “How provoking it must have been!” she said.
“No,” he reflected soberly. “Happiness—to speak platitude—has wonderfully little to do with a bank account. You look so good and wise I thought you had discovered that.”
She answered with deliberate acidity—
“I quite disagree. I, at all events, could never contemplate poverty with equanimity.”
“Not poverty,” he protested eagerly—“not poverty! The young, the earnest, and the hopeful know no poverty; they are not poor—where there is love,” and he searched her eyes as if his very life depended on discovering there a sign of her agreement with his sentiment.
She glanced about her at the indications of the speaker’s wealth and prodigality, smiled cynically, tapped him with her fan. “Farceur!” said she, “now you are romantic, and to talk romance in seriousness is ridiculous.”
Of a sudden he saw her what she really was—vain, cruel, calculating, parched in soul, despite her saintly face. He stared at her, almost stunned by disillusion, seeing the corruption of her nature rise like a scum upon the purple eyes.
To the left of his chair the door of the reception salon opened at the moment, and a voice beyond it plucked him from the depths of his despondency. He rose, incredulous, and rushed into the room, where a little old woman, simple and abashed at her surroundings, stood beside the secretary.