Billie looked at him sadly as he twisted his lips about. “Well, er—oh! you know the things I wouldn’t like you to do. For some women it’s all right, not for you.... You see, well, with some women it doesn’t seem to matter, it’s natural for them to do a bit of straying, but it’s not natural for you, and”—with unexpected acuteness—“it would make you miserable. You’d hate the game, because you’d see through the whole bally business, and you’d criticize yourself and him.”
“You’re talking of a mere flirtation,” returned Claudia quickly. “A liaison between a man and a woman may be something more than that. What, after all, is a gold band on the finger and a mumbling clergyman?”
“Course, if you put it that way, I can’t answer you. But I don’t say it’s different, only—well, they nearly all are flirtations of varying degrees of warmth. You don’t mean much to her, and she doesn’t mean much to you, but you pretend all the time. Of course”—vaguely—“there are grandes passions, like Shakespeare’s people, but they don’t grow on every gooseberry-bush. And I ought to know, you know.” He made the last remark quite simply, just as he might have complimented himself on his taste in ties.
“You haven’t looked for love,” she said sharply. “Love may come at any moment in your life, and I think you deny it—at your own risk.”
“Besides, Gilbert would make a hell of a row,” observed her brother. “A hell of a row.”
“I wasn’t talking of myself. We were merely arguing in—in a general way.”
He looked at her in silence, and she turned away, biting her lip. Then she rose with a little dry laugh. The one man of all those she knew whose tolerance she would have taken for granted had failed to back her up. Why should she be different from other neglected wives? Why should she go through life hungry and miserable? Suddenly she turned in surprise at Jack’s next remark.
“Why doesn’t Colin Paton get married? He’s a nice chap. Everyone speaks well of him.”
“Colin? Oh! I don’t think he cares for women that way.”