"Dearest, dearest brother," she murmured, "you talk like a foolish man. Women understand better. And if it is a part of your program that this girl is to be accepted by an old-fashioned society, now almost obsolete, but in which this family is merely a single superannuated unit, that program can never be carried out."
"I think you are mistaken," he said.
"I know I am not. It is inevitable that if you marry this girl she will be more or less ignored, isolated, humiliated, overlooked outside our own little family circle. Even in that limited mob which the newspapers call New York Society—in that modern, wealthy, hard-witted, over-jewelled, self-sufficient league which is yet too eternally uncertain of its own status to assume any authority or any responsibility for a stranger without credentials,—it would not be possible to make Valerie West acceptable in the slightest sense of the word. Because she is too well known; her beauty is celebrated; she has become famous. Her only chance there—or with us—would have been in her absolute anonymity. Then lies might have done the rest. But lying is now useless in regard to her."
"Perfectly," he said. "She would not permit it."
In his vacant gaze there was something changed—a fixedness born of a slow and hopeless enlightenment.
"If that is the case, there is no chance," he said thoughtfully. "I had not considered that aspect."
"I had."
He shook his head slightly, gazing through the window at the starry lustre overhead.
"I wouldn't care," he said, "if she would only marry me. If she'd do that I'd never bother anybody—nor embarrass the family—"
"Louis!"