“What is the good of looking at moonshine? The moon itself I have already seen.”
So Aristide and Mrs. Ducksmith sat by themselves outside the hotel, and he expounded to her the beauty of moonlight and its intoxicating effect on folks in love.
“Wouldn’t you like,” said he, “to be lying on that white burnished cloud with your beloved kissing your feet?”
“What odd things you think of.”
“But wouldn’t you?” he insinuated.
Her bosom heaved and swelled on a sigh. She watched the strip of silver for a while and then murmured a wistful “Yes.”
“I can tell you of many odd things,” said Aristide. “I can tell you how flowers sing and what colour there is in the notes of birds. And how a cornfield laughs, and how the face of a woman who loves can outdazzle the sun. Chère madame,” he went on, after a pause, touching her little plump hand, “you have been hungering for beauty and thirsting for sympathy all your life. Isn’t that so?”
She nodded.
“You have always been misunderstood.”
A tear fell. Our rascal saw the glistening drop with peculiar satisfaction. Poor Mrs. Ducksmith! It was a child’s game. Enfin, what woman could resist him? He had, however, one transitory qualm of conscience, for, with all his vagaries, Aristide was a kindly and honest man. Was it right to disturb those placid depths? Was it right to fill this woman with romantic aspirations that could never be gratified? He himself had not the slightest intention of playing Lothario and of wrecking the peace of the Ducksmith household. The realization of the saint-like purity of his aims reassured him. When he wanted to make love to a woman, pour tout de bon, it would not be to Mrs. Ducksmith.