“Does Mr. Harley agree with you? Does he feel it?”
“I don’t think Mr. Harley understands him. I can’t help thinking that he is prejudiced.” She was becoming mistress of her voice and color again.
“And you are not?”
“Perhaps I am. In my thought of him he would still be good, even if he had done all the bad things his enemies accuse him of.”
Virginia gave her up. This idealized interpretation of her betrothed was not the one she had, but for Aline it might be the true one. At least, she could not disparage him very consistently under the circumstances.
“Isn’t there a philosophy current that we find in people what we look for in them? Perhaps that is why you and Mr. Harley read in Mr. Ridgway men so diverse as you do. It is not impossible you are both right and both wrong. Heaven knows, I suppose. At least, we poor mortals fog around enough when we sit in judgment.” And Virginia shrugged the matter from her careless shoulders.
But Aline seemed to have a difficulty in getting away from the subject. “And you—what do you read?” she asked timidly.
“Sometimes one thing and sometimes another. To-day I see him as a living refutation of all the copy-book rules to success. He shatters the maxims with a touch-and-go manner that is fascinating in its immorality. A gambler, a plunger, an adventurer, he wins when a careful, honest business man would fail to a certainty.”
Aline was amazed. “You misjudge him. I am sure you do. But if you think this of him why—”
“Why do I marry him? I have asked myself that a hundred times, my dear. I wish I knew. I have told you what I see in him to-day; but tomorrow—why, to-morrow I shall see him an altogether different man. He will be perhaps a radiating center of altruism, devoted to his friends, a level-headed protector of the working classes, a patron of the arts in his own clearminded, unlettered way. But whatever point of view one gets at him, he spares one dullness. Will you explain to me, my dear, why picturesque rascality is so much more likable than humdrum virtue?”