"There now, Free!" she soothed me one day when I had expressed a mild concern about her state of mind. "There now, Free, don't you worry about me! We all have to grow up sometime, don't we? Can't stay young plants forever—especially we women. Comes a time when we got to be grafted on to old stock and get ready for bearing—eh? Well, that's me, old thing!"
I was shocked at her indelicacy and did not hesitate to say so.
"If that is how you regard your forthcoming nuptials," I said stiffly, "you ought to dissolve your betrothal. One should marry only for love—for love alone!"
"Oh, should they?" said Peaches. "That's all you know about it. I'm very fond of Mr. Mark—of Sebastian, and he is the typical good husband."
"But you don't love him!" I protested firmly.
"I love him as much as I am likely to love anyone," responded Peaches—like a young Portia, so stately and serious. "And even if he is half a head shorter than I am he has a kind heart and he's a gentleman."
"And not over sixty years old!" I retorted. "Oh, Peaches, do you really want to do it?"
Suddenly she was serious. The defensively bantering light went out of her changeful eyes.
"Don't, Free!" she pleaded. "Yes, I do want to. I want to be a reasonable being—to make the best life I can for myself since I must go on living. I don't want to be a coward. I am still young and I haven't seen much of the world. Riches, art treasures, cultured people, and things—social position—there must be joy in these things or folks would not struggle for them so! And since they must be filling up the emptiness in a whole lot of lives I'm going to have a try at them too. Don't be afraid for me. I know just what I am doing. I know that I shall never care again. But I can like. And I can live, and I'm going to use my old beau to help me get the most out of life that I can when—when—well, you know, only don't say it, please!"
She was wonderful. So big and beautiful and full of health and common sense. I could not but admire her, though, of course, a few maidenly tears and vows of lifelong fidelity to the heroic dead would have been more suitable. But things had already gone too far for that. At the time the above-recorded conversation took place we were standing upon the steps of the Ritz in New York, waiting for the car which was to convey us up the river. Mr. Markheim had not expected us for another week and so hadn't been at the hotel to meet us, but was sending his chauffeur.