“I’ve heard too much of that jargon,” he answered. “I’ve been cured of a belief in souls.”
“Or if they do exist,” said Minna, “people only talk of them as they do of their livers—when they are diseased.”
“You began talking of yours. Is it out of order? You try it a bit, don’t you?”
Hardened as Minna was, and readily as she would have laughed at the speech coming from the lips of another man, yet in the remorseful bitterness of her heart, which this sudden association with him seemed to have swelled to sensitive tenseness, she felt his words jar through her body.
“One’s own self-mockery is enough,” she replied, coldly.
“Oh, come,” he cried with a laugh, “we are not going to turn ourselves inside out, as if we were at a London afternoon tea and anatomy crush. It’s rough on the ponies. You haven’t even admired them.”
As they turned on to the smooth white road between the Public Gardens and the sea, and dashed down the long Promenade des Anglais, with great clatter of hoofs and tossing of impatient heads, Gerard felt the man’s pride in association with respectable horseflesh. He was in luck. Such a turn-out is not to be met with in every Riviera livery stable. And the elemental pride in temporary possession of female beauty added to his satisfaction. Yet the fact that he was driving the notorious Queen of Sheba, before the eyes of all Nice, brought a satirical smile to his lips.
“There would be a nice little scandal about, if either of us were attached,” he said. “It is comfortable not to have to bother about the proprieties.”
“I consider this Bayswatery in its conventionality,” replied Minna. “If you look upon this as an adventure, I wonder what you’d think of anything really audacious.”
“I am ready to commit any audacity. Name one.”