One of the things that interested him was the number of beautiful young women. He was interested to see how full and complete mentally and physically so many girls appeared to be at eighteen. Why, in their taste, shrewdness, completeness, they were fit mates for a man of almost any age up to forty! Some of them looked so wonderful to him—so fresh and ruddy with the fires of ambition and desire burning briskly in their veins. Beautiful girls—real flowers, like roses, light and dark. And to think the love period was all over for him—completely over!
Suzanne came down with others after a while from some room upstairs, and once more Eugene was impressed with her simple, natural, frank, good-natured attitude. Her light chestnut-colored hair was tied with a wide band of light blue ribbon which matched her eyes and contrasted well with her complexion. Again, her dress was some light flimsy thing, the color of peach blossoms, girdled with ribbon and edged with flowers like a wreath. Soft white sandals held her feet.
"Oh, Mr. Witla!" she said gaily, holding out her smooth white arm on a level with her eyes and dropping her hand gracefully. Her red lips were parted, showing even white teeth, arching into a radiant smile. Her eyes were quite wide as he remembered, with an innocent, surprised look in them, which was wholly unconscious with her. If wet roses could outrival a maiden in all her freshness, he thought he would like to see it. Nothing could equal the beauty of a young woman in her eighteenth or nineteenth year.
"Yes, quite, Mr. Witla," he said, beaming. "I thought you had forgotten. My, we look charming this evening! We look like roses and cut flowers and stained-glass windows and boxes of jewels, and, and, and——"
He pretended to be lost for more words and looked quizzically up at the ceiling.
Suzanne began to laugh. Like Eugene, she had a marked sense of the comic and the ridiculous. She was not in the least vain, and the idea of being like roses and boxes of jewels and stained-glass windows tickled her fancy.
"Why, that's quite a collection of things to be, isn't it?" she laughed, her lips parted. "I wouldn't mind being all those things if I could, particularly the jewels. Mama won't give me any. I can't even get a brooch for my throat."
"Mama is real mean, apparently," said Eugene vigorously. "We'll have to talk to mama, but she knows, you know, that you don't need any jewels, see? She knows that you have something which is just as good, or better. But we won't talk about that, will we?"
Suzanne had been afraid that he was going to begin complimenting her, but seeing how easily he avoided this course she liked him for it. She was a little overawed by his dignity and mental capacity, but attracted by his gaiety and lightness of manner.
"Do you know, Mr. Witla," she said, "I believe you like to tease people."