“Because you would put too much in. According to your last letters you are getting beastly rich. You would take all the tragedy out of the situation, and my experience would vanish in your cheque.”
“I don't know why my feelings should always be cuffed out of the way of your experiences,” Lindsay said. She retorted, “Oh yes, you do”; and they regarded each other through an instant's silence with visible good-fellowship.
“A reasonably strong company this time?” Lindsay asked.
“Thank you. 'Company' is gratifying. For a month we have been a 'troupe'—in the first-class end. Fairish. Bad to middling. Fifteen of us, and when we are not doing Hamlet and Ophelia we can please with light comedy, or the latest thing in rainbow chiffon done on mirrors with a thousand candlepower. Bradley and I will have to do most of the serious work. But I have improved—oh, a lot. You wouldn't know my Lady Whippleton.”
It was a fervid announcement, but it carried an implication which appeared to prevent Lindsay's kindling.
“Then Bradley is here too?” he remarked.
“Oh yes,” she said; and an instinct sheathed itself in her face. “But it is much better than it was, really. He is hardly ever troublesome now. He understands. And he teaches me a great deal more than I can tell you. You know,” she asserted, with the effect of taking an independent view, “as an artist he has my unqualified respect.”
“You have a fine disregard for the fact that artists are men when they are not women,” Duff said. “I don't believe their behaviour is a bit more affected by their artistry than it would be by a knowledge of the higher mathematics.”
She turned indignant eyes on him. “Fancy YOUR saying that! Fancy your having the impertinence to offer me so absurd a sophistry! At what Calcutta dinner-table did you pick it up?” she cried derisively. “Well, it shows that one can't trust one's best friend loose among the conventions!”
He had decided that it would be a trifle edged to say that such matters were not often discussed at Calcutta dinner-tables, when she added, with apparent inconsistency and real dejection, “It IS a hideous bore.”