“Pardon me, but what a public-spirited woman I always find in you.”
He stood beside her chair, looking down at her, and at the lace that filled her bosom.
“And you, my friend?”
“I come to enjoy perpetual rejuvenescence, and to learn to live in the sun rather than in a fog of philosophy that gives us little but cold feet and swollen heads.”
She looked up at him and laughed. And Hortense’s laugh had a delightful audacity that rallied the world upon its dulness.
“They enjoy themselves, these children; they romp, chatter, make a noise; I never allow them to quarrel. I try to teach them that there is one folly to be condemned, the folly of suffering ourselves to lose our youth.”
My lord’s eyes were fixed on the young spark, Tom Temple, who was burlesquing a Spanish dance in the middle of the salon.
“We are always in danger of losing the art of make-believe.”
“You English are so serious, so grim.”
“Say, rather—selfish.”