"Oh, Clive, I'm not! I'm careless, pleasure-loving, inclined to laziness—and even to dissipation—"
"You!"
"Within certain limits," she added demurely. "I dance a lot: I know I smoke too much and drink too much champagne. I'm no angel, Clive. I won altogether too much at auction last night; ask Jim Allys. And really, if I didn't have a mind and feel a desire to cultivate it, I'd be the limit I suppose." She laughed and tossed her chin; and the pure loveliness of her child-like throat was suddenly and exquisitely revealed.
"I'm too intelligent to go wrong I suppose," she said. "I adore cultivating my mental faculties even more than I like to misbehave." She added a trifle shyly. "I speak French and Italian and German very nicely. And I sing a little and play acceptably. Please compliment me, Clive."
But her quick smile died out as she looked into his eyes—eyes haunted by the vision of all that he had denied his manhood and this girl's young womanhood—all that he had lost, irretrievably and forever on that day he married another woman.
"What is the matter, Clive?" she asked with sweet concern.
He answered: "Nothing, I guess ... except—you are very—wonderful—to me."