“Jane,” said Billie, “have you ever been in love?”
Jane Hubbard knocked the ash off her cigarette.
“Not since I was eleven,” she said in her deep musical voice. “He was my music-master. He was forty-seven and completely bald, but there was an appealing weakness in him which won my heart. He was afraid of cats, I remember.”
Billie gathered her hair into a molten bundle and let it run through her fingers.
“Oh, Jane!” she exclaimed. “Surely you don’t like weak men. I like a man who is strong and brave and wonderful.”
“I can’t stand brave men,” said Jane, “it makes them so independent. I could only love a man who would depend on me in everything. Sometimes, when I have been roughing it out in the jungle,” she went on rather wistfully, “I have had my dreams of some gentle clinging man who would put his hand in mine and tell me all his poor little troubles and let me pet and comfort him and bring the smiles back to his face. I’m beginning to want to settle down. After all there are other things for a woman to do in this life besides travelling and big-game hunting. I should like to go into Parliament. And, if I did that, I should practically have to marry. I mean, I should have to have a man to look after the social end of life and arrange parties and receptions and so on, and sit ornamentally at the head of my table. I can’t imagine anything jollier than marriage under conditions like that. When I came back a bit done up after a long sitting at the House, he would mix me a whisky-and-soda and read poetry to me or prattle about all the things he had been doing during the day.... Why, it would be ideal!”
Jane Hubbard gave a little sigh. Her fine eyes gazed dreamily at a smoke ring which she had sent floating towards the ceiling.
“Jane,” said Billie. “I believe you’re thinking of somebody definite. Who is he?”
The big-game huntress blushed. The embarrassment which she exhibited made her look manlier than ever.
“I don’t know his name.”