"Ah," smiled Wooton, to the girl, "you like it—the life here?"
"Yes; I like it. I don't say that I like it better than other things. But who could help liking that?" She swept her parasol around so that it pointed out toward the river. There was complete darkness there, lit up occasionally by the lights of passing steamers. Fog-whistles sounded occasionally; on the opposite shore there was a dim glow of yellow lights. The water sobbed ceaselessly; there was a mist rising, and the steamer lights began to seem hazier than ever, mere golden circles hanging in the dense darkness. The violins were playing something of Waldteufel's.
It was true; not even the most patriotic of Americans could have helped granting that all this was very pleasant. Dorothy Ware had certainly given up being half-hearted in her enthusiasm for European things; they had met so many people and had rubbed up against so much of cosmopolitanism that unconsciously she had come to see that to apply the narrow Lincolnville view to all the people she saw now was a trifle absurd. She gave herself candidly over to enjoy it all. That was what she had come for. And it must be confessed that, during this process of enjoyment, her memories of her former self became ghosts of ever-increasing vagueness. When she caught herself thinking of Dick Lancaster it was usually to wonder what sort of a girl he had married. She smiled when she thought of the things he had said to her before they parted. It didn't seem to touch her at all now, and she seemed sure that a man slips out of that sort of thing much earlier than the woman.
They met Wooton a good deal after that. He spent a good deal of time among the pictures, and when they visited the Gruene Gwoeble they found him there. He was invariably bright and amusing; he offered to pilot them and smooth things for them generally; Mrs. Ware began to think he was tremendously nice. She remembered that Miss Alexander—now Mrs. Tremont—had always been one of the most aristocratic of girls; she recalled with something of a shudder, her own awe at her school-mate's lengthy dissertation upon blood and family and kindred subjects. So, she argued, if Wooton was in Mrs. Tremont's set in town, there was certainly not the vestige of a doubt concerning his being eminently the correct thing. She had lived in the country so long herself that she admitted she was no longer able to note the difference between good coin and bad; but she had infinite faith in Mrs. Tremont. Dorothy, too, got to feel that he was very charming; he was so handsome, and dressed so well. It was very pleasant to have him in the party; he added distinction. Wooton had admitted that he knew young Lancaster; he divined that she had liked the boy; he was wise enough to tell her only pleasant things about Dick. The only thing Dorothy objected to was that Wooton went about a good deal with the Tremonts. It seemed to her that he was quite devoted to Miss Eugenie.
"I don't like her a bit," she told him rather tactlessly, speaking of Miss Tremont, "she's so supercilious. I never know when she's laughing at me and when she's not listening to me. I suppose she thinks I'm a country chit and don't know anything. But I wouldn't be clever the way she's clever for anything in the world. Why does she have to sneer at innocence and goodness? Nobody ever accused her of either, did they?"
Which, Wooton thought to himself, was not half bad. As a matter of fact he enjoyed being with Eugene Tremont immensely. She was one of those intensely modern girls that the world is so unhappily rich in just now. She would talk about any subject under the sun. She declared that she had always cared more for male society anyway; she despised her own sex and said spiteful things about it. She pretended to be completely cognizant of all the wickedness there was in the world; and she went on the presumption that man was a sort of infernal machine that there was unlimited fun—the fun of danger—in handling. Men liked her at first invariably; there was something refreshing and stimulating in the nonchalance with which she tabooed no subject from her conversation; they said to themselves that this was a person, thank goodness, whom one did not eternally have to consider in the light of a sex, but rather of a sexless cleverness. But, somehow or other, her cleverness wearied presently; she palled as all surfaces must inevitably pall. Wooton, however, turned to her because she was of his own special calibre—all cleverness, and no apparent sharply defined system of conduct. With the Wares he was so perpetually on a grid-iron; he was afraid of saying something that would startle them. They amused him, these people, with their simplicity, their taking virtue for granted and vice for an abhorent mystery! To talk to them it was necessary to keep a constant check on his cynical; while with Eugene Tremont it was sword to sword, a sharp continuous fencing with verbal weapons.
So, when Dorothy Ware made the cutting little speech about Miss Tremont, Wooton told himself that there was something more than mere dislike for the Boston girl at the bottom of it. Considering the matter, he broke into a laugh. Was it possible, h'm. That would really be too rich.
He began to be seen with the Tremonts oftener than ever. He went with them to the opera, he took a seat in their landau. He went to Teplitz with them.
"They're more in the same set, I suppose," said Mrs. Ware, when Dorothy spoke of it. "He was at college with her brother, too; I guess they talk about him a good deal."
Dorothy guessed that she knew better; but she said nothing. Somehow, Dresden began to seem fearfully dreary. She began importuning her mother to pack up and go to Munich; they had some friends there. Dorothy declared Dresden made her homesick; she said it was all so small and pretty, anyway; it wasn't a metropolis, yet it tried to ape the real article. And then there were so many Americans—you couldn't talk English anywhere without having people understand you, which was distinctly annoying, because occasionally one likes to make personal asides about costumes and hats and complexions—and, well, what was the use of staying there any longer anyhow? But Mrs. Ware declared the climate agreed with her. She said she hadn't felt so well for ever so long, she wasn't going to try any other place as this one agreed with her. Did Dorothy want to see her die? No; Dorothy did not. She submitted, and went about looking dismal.