She reflected that she would have hated to feel apologetic for her husband. And yet she had seen girls of her own age, whom she knew to be clever and even brilliant, marry men, and not for money or position, who seemed to be absolutely devoid of the grey matter we call brain. She had heard them rave rapturously over commonplace males that bored her in twenty minutes, and she knew that Love is a freakish thing. Fate might have played a joke on her. “I wonder what it is exactly—this sex attraction?” she murmured to the sleeping dachshund, and pigeonholed the question for future investigation, when her mind was quite clear and at rest, for Gilbert had urged a speedy marriage.
Gilbert’s love-making had been almost inarticulate. She wished he had said something memorable, something she could enshrine in her heart and when she was an old woman bring forth with a happy smile—“Do you remember you said——” But Gilbert had hardly even said the conventional Ich liebe dich. Ah! but his heart, beating violently against her own, had said it. Claudia did not know that in the crucial moment love and passion are indistinguishable, so she had no doubt that his soul had spoken to hers.
Billie raised his head from the eiderdown and looked questioningly at the door. Someone was approaching. A rap with something sharp and hard followed.
“Can I come in, Claudia? Johnson said you were having your breakfast.”
Claudia called out permission to enter, and a fair young Amazon, riding-crop in hand, stalked into the room. It was Patricia Iverson, generally called Pat, the youngest of the three children of Circe. Pat was unusually tall, and in her long riding-habit she looked even taller than usual. She was flushed with exertion, her fine, fair skin showed almost startlingly against the black of her hat and habit.
“Bill, where are your manners? Why don’t you wag your tail? All right, I shall wag it for you! What’s the good of being a dog with a usable tail, if you don’t wave it when a lady enters the room? Oh! it was spiffing in the Park this morning.”
“I am sure it was. I feel ashamed to be in bed, but I was so late again this morning. Past four. Aren’t we fools to dance the night away and spend the mornings in bed?”
“Yes,” said Patricia, disposing her long limbs in an easy chair. “But I shall do it when I get the chance.”
“You ache to be dissipated?”
“Rather, because after dissipation you can appreciate virtue and—a rest. Claudia, why are you smiling like a Cheshire cat this morning? I hate people to smile like that unless they tell me the reason. It’s like hearing the music of a dance you can’t go to.”