He was laughing, too, now. They had finished their fruit salad and sherbet; she lighted a cigarette for him, taking a dainty puff and handing it to him with an adorable shudder.
"I don't like it! I don't like any vices! How women can enjoy what men enjoy is a mystery to me. Smoke slowly, darling, because when that cigarette is finished you must make a very graceful bow and say good-bye to me until to-morrow."
"This is simply devilish, Jacqueline! I never see you any more."
"Nonsense! You have plenty to do to amuse you—haven't you, dear?"
But the things that once occupied his leisure so casually and so agreeably no longer attracted him.
"I don't want to read seed catalogues," he protested. "Couldn't I be of use to you, Jacqueline? I'll do anything you say—take off my coat and sweep out your office, or go behind the counter in the shop and sell gilded gods——"
"Imagine the elegant Mr. Desboro selling antiquities to the dangerous monomaniacs who haunt such shops as mine! Dear, they'd either drive you crazy or have you arrested for fraud inside of ten minutes. No; you will make a perfectly good husband, Jim, but you were never created to decorate an antique shop."
He tried to smile, but only flushed rather painfully. A sudden and wholly inexplicable sense of inferiority possessed him.
"You know," he said, "I'm not going to stand around idle while you run a prosperous business concern. And anyway, I can't see it, Jacqueline. You and I are going to have a lot of social obligations to——"