"Yes. Rather a pleasant girl. Charmingly unsophisticated. Known her long?"
"We were children together."
"Ah, then she's a country girl, so to say, eh? I thought so."
Lancaster was deep in thought. The other continued to ply himself with wine.
"We had some charming days together," he went on, reminiscently. "She amused me immensely. The Tremonts were staying at the same place then, and I used to amuse myself contrasting that Tremont girl with Miss Ware. The one was like an armor-plate, the other impressionable as wax."
He began to smile to himself mysteriously. "Do have some of this Rauenthaler Berg," he urged, effusively. "It's really capital!" He ordered another bottle, and helped himself liberally. Lancaster was scarcely heeding his companion. He was looking out over the water. For once, he was forgetting to be amused.
"As between two men of the world, you know," Wooton was saying, leaning impressively on his elbow, "it may as well be understood that that Tremont girl is the newest kind a new woman." "Know what she said to me one day? 'The only thing I don't like about love is its consequences!' Nice girls, these new women, eh?" He laughed softly and drank again. Lancaster turned to watch him. The man was showing all the cad in him; the wine was bringing it out. "Women, nowadays," Wooton went on, "make a fad of everything except the homely virtues. They deliver lectures on art, and literature, and posters, and music, and the redemption of the fallen; but they never care for the staple virtues that bring happiness to households. I'm not saying that I'm a model, not by a damned sight, but I have my eyes open, and I think the woman of today is trying to usurp, chiefly, man's prerogative of being a roue if he chooses. What she needs is to go to a medical school. Then she knows the difference." He crumbled a piece of bread, and flung it out to the swans that floated down before them.
"I don't mind telling you," he continued, confidentially, "that they were both in love with me, Miss Tremont and Miss Ware. In Miss Tremont's case, I naturally, had no scruples at all. The fact is, I think she took the initiative." He stopped, smiling significantly, and sipping at the yellow wine.
Lancaster's eyes were glowing with anger. The man's brutality was so disgusting! Not that there was anything surprising in these wine-woven statements, for a man who could welch his debts in the way Wooton did, two years ago, was hardly a man to suffer from scruples of any sort; but the very fact of having the names of people well-known to him brought up in this way was nauseating to Lancaster.
"Why don't you drink some of this wine?" Wooton was holding the bottle across the table. "No? You're missing something good, you can bet on that! Wine is the way to forgetfulness, and most men would sell their souls to be able to forget. Don't you agree with me? That's right." He leered fatuously at his companion. "I've always liked you, y'know, Lancaster, always liked you. Friend of mine, yessir, friend of mine; you bet! Great artist, too, proud to know you. But, oh Scott! what a simple sort of idiot you were when you first came to town! You'll excuse my candor; friend of your's, I am, yessir, friend of yours." He proceeded to watch the swans that glided past them, rippling the smooth water gracefully. "Beautiful creature," he drawled in drunken sentimentality, "beautiful creature! Reminds me of that girl's neck,—that girl I kissed in Schandau. Beautiful neck, Lancaster, beautiful neck! White, and smooth, and soft, Moreover, she had the most adorable lips; extraordinarily sweet, I assure you. Lancaster, I understand you've been rioting all over this continent, you dog you; but I defy you to say you kissed any sweeter lips than those. I defy you to—!" He sank back into his chair, chuckling to himself. "Excuse me, didn't mean to be so energetic. Excuse me."