CHAPTER XXVI

KATE DUVEEN GOES ABROAD

Although Hugh Massinger had reached the cynical age of thirty-seven, he had been so well treated by the Press and the public, that he had no cause to develop a sneer. His essential self-satisfaction saved him from being bored, for to be very pleased with oneself is to be pleased with life in general. His appetites were still ready to be piqued, and he had the same exotic delight in colour that he had had when he was an undergraduate of twenty, and this reaction to colour is one of the subtlest tests of a man’s vitality. When the sex stimulus weakens, when a man becomes even a little disillusioned and a little bored, he no longer thrills to colours. It is a sign that the youth in him is growing grey.

Hugh Massinger’s senses were abnormally excitable. He was city bred, and a sitter in chairs, and a lounger upon lounges, and his ideas upon flowers, woods, fields and the country in general were utterly false, hectic and artificial. He was the sort of sentimentalist who was always talking of the “beautiful intrigues of the plants,” of “the red lust of June,” and the “swelling bosom of August.” His art was a sexual art. His thoughts lay about on cushions, and he never played any kind of game.

About this time Eve discovered that his sentimentality was growing more demonstrative. It was like a yellow dog that fawned round and round her chair, but seemed a little afraid of coming too near. He took a great deal of trouble in trying to make her talk about herself, and in thrusting a syrupy sympathy upon her.

“You are looking tired to-day,” he would say, “I shan’t let you work.”

She would protest that she was not tired.