"Let me talk to you. I have only a minute. My masseuse is coming and in America one doesn't receive with a masseuse—enfin. Listen to me well. You want to marry seriously—for good, then? Children and all the rest? Well, my boy, you might just as well marry Emma Fornez and expect her to spend her days over a ragout as to marry Chartèrs. Will she give up her career?"
"We haven't thought of that."
"It makes no difference. On the stage, off the stage, it's the same thing. She won't change. Do you want to play the part of a valet, a little dancing dog, hein? For that's just what you'll be; and one of twenty. For she's used to crowds of men. She won't change. Love, my dear boy, is madness, hallucination, you are drunk; but everything returns as it was before—believe me. If I were a man I'd never fall in love with a woman until I married her—it's easy enough then. You would know what you're getting!"
The masseuse came in, sliding on tiptoe from one door to another.
"Victorine—ma masseuse! In a minute, in a minute, Madame Tenier. I'll be with you in a minute. Where was I? Teddy, you do not know us professional women—we are wrestlers, we are always struggling with you men—I warn you. No two ways. She will never be happy, my dear boy—because she never is happy. We are never happy, or we would not be what we are. And what of moods, day in and day out. Tiens—I'll tell you what you'll be—another Victorine. Victorine, où diable es-tu? No, no, Teddy; don't be a big fool; don't be an idiot. You are so nice. You can amuse yourself so well. Don't put your head in a noose. If she loves you now, she won't to-morrow; she can't help it. Then where'll you be—in the soup, hein. And she? No, no, believe me, Teddy, never marry, in the first place, and then never marry one of us."
"There's something in what she says," thought Beecher, as he moodily descended in the elevator. "She knows her own kind better than I do."
He looked undecidedly at the clock and went to pay a dinner call on Mrs. Craig Fontaine. In ten minutes they were on the same subject.
"I am terribly upset," said the young widow. "I don't want any trouble to come to you, and I can't help thinking that what you are considering is a very risky step. In the first place, Teddy, you are too young."
He made a movement of impatience at this repetition, which had begun to offend his sense of dignity.
"You don't know what is ahead," she said warmly. "You do not realize that points of view change. What you seek now, romance, adventure, is not what you'll seek at thirty-five, and life is mostly after thirty-five, Ted. Today you are willing to sacrifice every friend in the world for one love; tomorrow you will realize that friends are our life, their ways, their companionship, their interests. Today you hold yourself very cheaply; tomorrow you will wake up, look round you, see what other women have brought to their husbands, and you will say, 'What am I worth?'"