“Oh, surely, surely!”
“But she prefers bronzes to people. I assure you it is so. I have heard her say that you can never be disappointed by a really good bronze, but that men and women often distress you by their absurdities and follies.”
“That sort of thing is only the outcome of a passing mood of youthful cynicism.”
“Is it? I sometimes think that a born collector, like Beryl, sees more in bronze and marble than in flesh and blood. She is very sweet, but she has quite a passion for possessing.”
“Is not the greatest possession of all the possession of another’s human heart?” said Braybrooke impressively, and with sentiment.
“I dare say it is, but really I cannot speak from experience,” said Fanny Cronin, with remarkable simplicity.
“Has it never occurred to you,” continued Braybrooke, “that your lovely charge is not likely to remain always Beryl Van Tuyn?”
Miss Cronin looked startled, and slightly moved her ears, a curious habit which she sometimes indulged in under the influence of sudden emotion, and which was indicative of mental stress.
“But if Beryl ever marries,” she said, “I might have to give up living in Paris! I might have to go back to America!”
She leaned forward, with her small, plump, and conspicuously freckled hands grasping the arms of her chair.