But the Marquess had been intrepid enough to laugh when, out of a large woolly cloud a mile aloft, a German flying-machine had suddenly charged him at a hundred miles an hour. He was calm enough now to laugh at the menace of Kedzie's past rushing out of the pink cloud about her.
“The more the merrier,” he said. “The third time's the charm.”
He sighed when he was alone and thought it rather shabby that Cupid should land him at last with a second-handed, a third-hearted arrow. But, after all, these were war times and Economy was the universal watchword. The arrow felt very cozy.
CHAPTER III
Unselfishness is an acquired art. Children rarely have it. That is why the Greeks represented love of a certain kind as a boy, selfish, treacherous, ingratiating, blind to appearances, naif, gracefully ruthless.
Kedzie and Strathdene were enamoured of each other. They were both zealots for experience, restless and reckless in their zest of life. As soon as they were convinced of their love, every restraint became an illegal restraint, illegal because they felt that only the law of love had jurisdiction over them.
When Kedzie received a telegram from Jim that he had secured a leave of absence for thirty days and would be in Newport in four she felt cruelly used. She forgot how she had angled for Jim and hustled him into matrimony.
She was afraid of him now. She thought of him as many women in captured cities once regarded and have recently again regarded the triumphing enemy as one who would count beauty the best part of the booty.