“She looks nothing like you, certainly, Lillian,” he replied, coolly, “if you insist on judging people by appearances, but it’s hardly a ‘fine’ way to judge.”
“Now, Wallie——” they had turned into the Crosby drive, between the rose of sharon and syringa bushes.
“Of course,” he went on, “you’re always waving that word around as if it were the only thing worth being, and every virtue hung on it. But what about honor, and generosity, and simplicity, and courage? Are they nothing compared to it?”
The runabout had stopped before the piazza steps, but Lillian sat still a moment, frowning faintly.
“When I said ‘fine,’” she answered, “I didn’t mean fine finish, cultivation, which is a surface thing, but I meant fine fiber, which goes deep and counts in every way with everything. One judges the big things by the small ones,” she said, as Wallie handed her out, “and remembering mother, and the way we were brought up to feel and understand, I think you will presently agree with me that Miss Remi is hardly—fine.”
She gave him a smile with the last word; and her look, the movement of her graceful head in the turn, the poise of her delicate body, the fall of her delicate dress, showed forth every shade of meaning which that word could contain.
The memory of her thus was with him all the afternoon. It buzzed like a bee in his brain that night through the dinner at the Crosbys’, though Lillian, ravishing in daintily blended shades of chiffon, referred by no suggestion to the talk of the afternoon. She and her word, he thought, mutually described one another. Lillian was fine, and fine meant Lillian.
Deep down or on the surface, he knew she was the real thing. And the inevitable, following question was, what was Blanche Remi? She was the real thing, too. He was sure of that. Lil was ’way off, he told himself, when she said the big things showed up in the little. He had been bothered all his life by the petty goodnesses of women, and now that he had found one who had the great goodness he was not going to be disturbed by Lil’s scruples. As for being “in love” with Blanche Remi—Lillian had put it to him as he had never put it to himself.
From the first night her marvelous eyes had flashed into his indolent notice, he had felt an inclination to exterminate every other man who talked to her. And there were so many. The supposition on the tongues of Santa Barbara that all these men made love to her he had not believed—could not have tolerated. Why he had not made love to her himself was not from lack of impulse, but something in the very greatness of the emotions and passions she roused in him, something in her fine, free ignorance of the trifles that make up the virtue of most women, had made any trifling with her impossible to him. But he felt himself brought down to facts. What was he finally intending toward this girl whom he never saw without wanting to kiss, to carry off? His wife?
Well, Lil was right. Blanche did lack the superficial polish. Strange he hadn’t noticed that before. But that was just the use of Lil. She could be a lot of help if she could only be made to like Blanche, and, of course, all that was necessary was that Lil should know her better. He would, he decided, take Blanche to call there to-morrow.