“Dear Miss Archer, I have taken to you at once. I notice you do not use that detestable expression ‘in love.’ This is our Beginning. You were saying—?”
“I was going to say, when men love they are never happy until they discover whether she loves them in return; uncertainty gives them no joy.”
“It does, they think it does not. That is just what I want to illustrate; when a man does know it, and she does love him, then he marries her, he is certain of her. He may become resigned, but he is not happy, and then—”
“Yes, and then?”
“He is forever dissatisfied.”
“I thought women only were dissatisfied.”
“Men are, too,” said Mr. George; “I want to show the unhappiness of certainty. I know it.”
“This is our dance, Launa,” said Captain Carden, standing before her and endeavouring to show his proprietorship.
She did not rise. She looked at him and resented his calling her “Launa” as he did. He was not her friend. She disliked him. His jerky manner and his shifty eyes repelled her.
“Launa,” murmured Mr. George, “your name? and it was surely not given by your godfathers and godmothers?”