"What he steals doesn't hurt the poor."
"So long as the tigers fight among themselves and leave the goats alone,
it doesn't stir you. Is that it?"
"Possibly."
"And besides, he's a handsome beggar, if there ever was one."
"He has the face of an angel!"
"And the soul of a vandal!"--with a touch of irritability.
"Now you aren't fair. A vandal destroys things; this man only
transfers----"
"For a handsome monetary consideration----"
"Only transfers a picture from one gallery to another."
"Well, we've seen the last of him for a while, anyhow."
"I wonder."
"Will you answer me a question?"
"Perhaps."
"Do you know where those beads are?"
"A little while gone I smelt tobacco smoke," she answered, dryly.
"I see. We'll talk of something else then. Have you ever been in love?"
"Have you?"
"Violently--so I believed."
"But you got over it?"
"Absolutely! And you?"
"Oh, I haven't had the time. I've been too busy earning bread and butter.
What was she like?"
"A beautiful mirage--the lie in the desert, you might say. Has it ever
occurred to you that the mirage is the one lie Nature utters?"
"I hadn't thought. She deceived you?"
"Yes."
A short duration of silence.
"Doesn't hurt to talk about her?"
"Lord, no! Because I wasn't given fairy stories when I was little, I took
them seriously when I was twenty-three."
"Puppy love."
"It went a little deeper than that."
"But you don't hate women?"
"No. I never hated the woman who deceived me. I was terribly sorry for
her."
"For having lost so nice a husband?"--with a bit of malice.
He greeted this with laughter.
"It is written," she observed, "that we must play the fool sometime or
other."
"Have you ever played it?"
"Not yet, but you never can tell."
"Jane, you're a brick!"
"Jane!" she repeated. "Well, I don't suppose there's any harm in your
calling me that, with partitions in between."
"They used to call me Denny."
"And you want me to call you that?"
"Will you?"
"I'll think it over--Denny!"
They laughed. Both recognized the basic fact in this running patter. Each
was trying to buck up the other. Jane was honestly worried. She could not
say what it was that worried her, but there was a strong leaven in her of
old-wives' prescience. It wasn't due to this high-handed adventure of
Cleigh, senior; it was something leaning down darkly from the future that
worried her. That hand mirror!