“Oh, he’d have been all right alone; but his wife is an empty chatterbox, insipidly pretty, and he adores her in a fatuous way. How men of sense can—well, I suppose reason doesn’t count in such matters.”
“So you are not going to paint her?”
“Not for worlds. I should turn out a chocolate box cover. I must have a soul as well as a body. They were just a couple of honeymooners. Disgusting.”
“It’s always disgusting to see other people in love.”
“Perhaps that has something to do with it. He’s simply lost his reason for a while; he’ll grow sane again some day, soon probably, and then, likely enough, she’ll cry her eyes out for a day or two, and then will be quite happy for the rest of her unnatural life with her jewels and dresses. She’s just a material little doll.”
“It must have been stupid—no one else?”
“Only another woman, a tall, sedate person; I didn’t quite understand her.”
“Then you weren’t altogether bored?”
“She was too much of a puzzle. Either intensely dull, or dangerously clever. At any rate, if I were Mrs. West I would not often have Miss Lane by my side. I rather fancy she’s a woman a man might love absolutely. And when West gets sick of his wife—Lord, what silly gossip I’m talking. Do be a dear and make me a cup of chocolate; you know how, and then we’ll talk about something more interesting than the Wests.”
When she came back with the steaming cup, she found him fast asleep. She stood looking down on him, lithe, slender, well-formed, the neatly trimmed beard, the heavy black hair, the long, delicate hands. She wondered if she would grow to hate him. She believed that she could not long keep from disliking intensely, or at any rate despising, a weak man. He had been too easy a conquest, unable to withstand the subtle flattery of a woman’s weakness and call for help.