Three days afterward Ethel called on Dora Stanhope at the Savoy. She found her alone, and she had evidently been crying. Indeed, she frankly admitted the fact, declaring that she had been "so bored and so homesick, that she relieved she had cried her beauty away." She glanced at Ethel's radiant face and neat fresh toilet with envy, and added, "I am so glad to see you, Ethel. But I was sure that you would come as soon as you knew I wanted you."
"Oh, indeed, Dora, you must not make yourself too sure of such a thing as that! I really came to London to get some new gowns. I have been shopping all morning."
"I thought you had come in answer to my letter. I was expecting you. That is the reason I did not go out with Basil."
"Don't you expect a little too much, Dora? I have a great many interests and duties----"
"I used to be first."
"When a girl marries she is supposed to----"
"Please don't talk nonsense. Basil does not take the place of everyone and everything else. I think we are often very tired of each other. This morning, when I was telling him what trouble I had with my maid, Julia, he actually yawned. He tried to smother the yawn, but he could not, and of course the honeymoon is over when your bridegroom yawns in your face while you are telling him your troubles."
"I should think you would be glad it was over. Of all the words in the English language 'honeymoon' is the most ridiculous and imbecile."
"I suppose when you get married you will take a honeymoon."
"I shall have more sense and more selfishness. A girl could hardly enter a new life through a medium more trying. I am sure it would need long-tested affections and the sweetest of tempers to make it endurable."
"I cannot imagine what you mean."
"I mean that all traveling just after marriage is a great blunder. Traveling makes the sunniest disposition hasty and peevish, for women don't love changes as men do. Not one in a thousand is seen at her best while traveling, and the majority are seen at their very worst. Then there is the discomfort and desolation of European hotels--their mysterious methods and hours, and the ways of foreigners, which are not as our ways."
"Don't talk of them, Ethel. They are dreadful places, and such queer people."