“Well, I don’t dislike dancing, only I can’t afford the time. If I go to a dance I always stay too late. And I certainly should if I danced with your sister.”
“Not half a bad dancer, is she? She goes on at me for being too lackadaisical. She says she likes a partner who feels the music. But how can you feel the Chocolate Soldier every night, and what are you to feel? Quite imposs. I can’t understand all these delicate sort of feelings. They were playing ‘The Rosary’ the other night at supper, and the girl with me put on such a die-away air that I thought she felt sick. She was awfully annoyed with me for offering her some brandy.”
There was a general laugh as the men moved away from the table. The noise of the traffic outside was like a huge buzzing bee; the fresh air, holding a subtle promise of spring, came in through the open casement windows.
Iverson was the first to break up the party. “Claudia will go for me if I don’t get there in decent time.”
Fritz Neeburg went with him. He never kept late hours, for the hand of the surgeon must be steady and there must be no overnight fogs in his brain. Presently Carey Image, Paton and their host, were alone together.
CHAPTER II
CIRCE’S DAUGHTER
“Well, I’ve been an unsuccessful man as the world counts success,” said Image, as though the thread of their early conversation had never been broken, “but I’ve had fifteen years of great personal happiness. Can one expect more than that in life? Could I have been more successful? And I’ve laid up a store of beautiful memories for my old age.”
Everyone knew the story of Carey Image. He had himself started out in life at the Bar. When in his thirty-second year and well on the road to be a K.C., he was briefed as counsel in a divorce case. The woman was unsuccessful in divorcing her husband, the definition of legal cruelty did not cover practices and habits that had reduced a beautiful, healthy woman to a frightened shadow; but she was successful in winning a heart that had stood between her and the world for fifteen years afterwards. Pariahs in social London—for in those days public opinion was more cruel than it is to-day—they had wandered all over the world together. They had not been quite idle, for she helped Image to write several books of thoughtful travel that had first set the fashion of “wander literature.” She had died five years previously, and never once had Image regretted what he had given up for her. He had rescued a woman from the lowest depths and made her perfectly happy. His worldly failure in life had been his real success. The look in the dying woman’s eyes as they had turned to him had made an imperishable crown.