"Hasn't every man you met fallen in love with you since you were two years old?"
"I forgive you," she cried, "because you still can make pretty speeches. Thank you for the roses, Mr. Asticot. If I wore one would you paint it in? Or would it spoil your colour scheme?"
I selected the rose which would best throw up the pink sea-shell of her face, and she put it gaily in her corsage. She pirouetted up to the dais and with a whisk of skirts seated herself on the throne.
"If any of my French friends and relations knew I were doing this they would die of shock. It's lovely to defy conventions for a while. One will soon have to yield to them."
"Conventions are essential for the smooth conduct of social affairs," remarked Paragot.
She looked at him quizzically. "My dear Gaston, if you go on cultivating such unexceptional sentiments, they'll turn you into a churchwarden as soon as you set foot in Melford."
I had seen, for the first time in my life, a churchwarden in Somerset, a local cheesemonger of appalling correctitude. If Paragot ever came to resemble him, he was lost. There would be an entity who had passed through Paragot's experiences; but there would be no more Paragot.
"You must save him, Madame," I cried, "from being made a churchwarden."
Paragot lit a cigarette. I watched the first few puffs, awaiting a repartee. None came. I felt a qualm of apprehension. Was he already becoming de-Paragot-ised? I did not realise then what it means to a man to cast aside the slough of many years' decay, and take his stand clean before the world. He shivers, is liable to catch cold, like the tramp whose protective hide of filth is summarily removed in the workhouse bath. Nor did my dear lady realise this. How could she, bright freed creature, hungering after the long withheld joyousness of existence, and overwilling to delude herself into the belief that every shadow was a ray of sunlight? She had no notion of the man's grotesque struggles to conceal the shivering sensitiveness of his roughly cleaned soul.
She twitted him merrily.