"Oh, it's a silly custom that married people should pretend to be congenial during their honeymoon," Persis said. "Thank heaven, my initiation is almost over."
Forbes was genuinely horrified at such dealing with a subject so sacred as marriage; he forsook irony for his usual forthright utterance:
"Surely your—your husband doesn't neglect you?"
There was a touch of quick anxiety in Forbes' tone that showed how deeply he still cherished her.
"Neglect me?" Persis quoted. "If he only would! Willie does tag after me even more than I could wish; but he is growing restless. I can usually escape him by staying at home. He's doing the music-halls very thoroughly. If I can only suggest some very shocking revue I am assured of an evening alone. He is going to one over on Montmartre to-morrow night. I shall be quite deserted. We are stopping at the Hotel Meurice."
There was so dire a meaning in her hint and so much danger in playing again with the fire whose scar he still bore that Forbes ceased fencing and slashed: "Why do you torment me? You refused my love once."
"Never your love, my dear boy," said Persis, with abrupt seriousness. "I never refused your love—only your hand. I always encouraged your love."
"But I was poor," Forbes sneered.
"Yes, you were poor," Persis said, taking his own word and turning it against him, "and I knew less than I do now." She walked away to a niche beside a statue where they could talk without being overheard, but, being visible, were chaperoned by the crowd. She sank upon a settle of gold and old rose and motioned him to her side. Then, while her face and her fan proclaimed that their conversation was of the idlest, her voice was deep with elegy:
"Harvey, try to be just. If you had been rich—oh! if you had been rich!—then, as you are now, Harvey, then I could have believed that such a thing as a love-match is feasible."