Belden walked toward the shelf where the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" had its place. As he took it out, however, he said, "Come to think of it, Marsboro's going to commit matrimony pretty soon, I hear. Any objections?" He held the volume in the air, questioningly.
Marsboro laughed, and shook his head. "No, no," he said, "go on!"
"Just as if," Stanley observed, "a man about to be married knew what objections were! Dante Gabriel Belden, in some things you are weirdly primitive."
"I would sooner be primitive than effete," was Belden's retort.
Stanley turned to Marsboro. "Don't think me curious, old man, but is it any girl I know?"
Before Marsboro could reply, Vanstruther broke in with, "I'll bet money it's not! You don't suppose Marsboro is likely to think of marrying a woman with a past!"
Marsboro flushed a little; and moved uneasily in his chair. Dick, looking up from his Omar Khayam, wondered how the man could endure such verbal pitch and toss with such a subject.
But Stanley turned away from the matter with a sneer. "My dear fellow," he said, "if it will soothe your sweet soul, I am quite willing to admit that in the course of my life I have known some women who had pasts. They are invariably interesting. The only difference between a woman with a past and a man of the same sort is that the man still has a future before him. And a man with a future is as pathetic as a little boy chasing a butterfly: even if he wins the game, there is nothing but a corpse, and some dust on his fingers."
Belden, turning the pages of the Murger, said, deprecatingly, "Don't get Stanley started on moral reflections: in the first place, they are not moral; in the second place they reflect nothing but his own perverted soul. Talking morals with some men is like turning the pages of an edition de luxe with inky fingers."
Stanley laughed. "Good boy! But now go on with Rodolph and his flirtations. Where did you leave off? Hadn't he just written some poetry, spent the proceeds on feasting his friends, and the night in a tree?"