After returning from the station, Honora sat for a long time at her window, looking out on the park. The afternoon sunlight had the silvery tinge that comes to it in March; the red gravel of the centre driveway was very wet, and the grass of the lawns of the houses opposite already a vivid green; in the back-yards the white clothes snapped from the lines; and a group of children, followed by nurses with perambulators, tripped along the strip of sidewalk.
Why could not she feel the joys and desires of which Mrs. Holt had spoken? It never had occurred to her until to-day that they were lacking in her. Children! A home! Why was it that she did not want children? Why should such a natural longing be absent in her? Her mind went back to the days of her childhood dolls, and she smiled to think of their large families. She had always associated marriage with children—until she got married. And now she remembered that her childhood ideals of the matrimonial state had been very much, like Mrs. Holt's own experience of it: Why then had that ideal gradually faded until, when marriage came to her, it was faint and shadowy indeed? Why were not her spirit and her hopes enclosed by the walls in which she sat?
The housekeeping book came from Mrs. Holt the next morning, but Honora did not mention it to her husband. Circumstances were her excuse: he had had a hard day on the Exchange, and at such times he showed a marked disinclination for the discussion of household matters. It was not until the autumn, in fact, that the subject of finance was mentioned between them, and after a period during which Howard had been unusually uncommunicative and morose. Just as electrical disturbances are said to be in some way connected with sun spots, so Honora learned that a certain glumness and tendency to discuss expenses on the part of her husband were synchronous with a depression in the market.
"I wish you'd learn to go a little slow, Honora," he said one evening. "The bills are pretty stiff this month. You don't seem to have any idea of the value of money."
"Oh, Howard," she exclaimed, after a moment's pause for breath, "how can you say such a thing, when I save you so much?"
"Save me so much!" he echoed.
"Yes. If I had gone to Ridley for this suit, he would have charged me two hundred dollars. I took such pains—all on your account—to find a little man Lily Dallam told me about, who actually made it for one hundred and twenty-five."
It was typical of the unreason of his sex that he failed to be impressed by this argument.
"If you go on saving that way," said he, "we'll be in the hands of a receiver by Christmas. I can't see any difference between buying one suit from Ridley—whoever he may be—and three from Lily Dallam's 'little man,' except that you spend more than three times as much money."
"Oh, I didn't get three!—I never thought you could be so unjust, Howard.Surely you don't want me to dress like these Rivington women, do you?"
"I can't see anything wrong with their clothes," he maintained.
"And to think that I was doing it all to please you!" she cried reproachfully.
"To please me!"
"Who else? We-we don't know anybody in New York. And I wanted you to be proud of me. I've tried so hard and—and sometimes you don't even look at my gowns, and say whether you like them and they are all for you."
This argument, at least, did not fail of results, combined as it was with a hint of tears in Honora's voice. Its effect upon Howard was peculiar —he was at once irritated, disarmed, and softened. He put down his cigarette—and Honora was on his knee! He could not deny her attractions.
"How could you be so cruel, Howard?" she asked.
"You know you wouldn't like me to be a slattern. It was my own idea to save money—I had a long talk about economy one day with Mrs. Holt. And you act as though you had such a lot of it when we're in town for dinner with these Rivington people. You always have champagne. If—if you're poor, you ought to have told me so, and I shouldn't have ordered another dinner gown."
"You've ordered another dinner gown!"
"Only a little one," said Honora, "the simplest kind. But if you're poor—"
She had made a discovery—to reflect upon his business success was to touch a sensitive nerve.
"I'm not poor," he declared. "But the bottom's dropped out of the market, and even old Wing is economizing. We'll have to put on the brakes for awhile, Honora."
It was shortly after this that Honora departed on the first of her three visits to St. Louis.
This history concerns a free and untrammelled—and, let us add, feminine —spirit. No lady is in the least interesting if restricted and contented with her restrictions,—a fact which the ladies of our nation are fast finding out. What would become of the Goddess of Liberty? And let us mark well, while we are making these observations, that Liberty is a goddess, not a god, although it has taken us in America over a century to realize a significance in the choice of her sex. And—another discovery!—she is not a haus frau. She is never domiciled, never fettered. Even the French, clever as they are, have not conceived her: equality and fraternity are neither kith nor kin of hers, and she laughs at them as myths—for she is a laughing lady. She alone of the three is real, and she alone is worshipped for attributes which she does not possess. She is a coquette, and she is never satisfied. If she were, she would not be Liberty: if she were, she would not be worshipped of men, but despised. If they understood her, they would not care for her. And finally, she comes not to bring peace, but a sword.
At quarter to seven one blustery evening of the April following their fourth anniversary Honora returned from New York to find her husband seated under the tall lamp in the room he somewhat facetiously called his "den," scanning the financial page of his newspaper. He was in his dressing gown, his slippered feet extended towards the hearth, smoking a cigarette. And on the stand beside him was a cocktail glass—empty.
"Howard," she cried, brushing his ashes from the table, "how can you be so untidy when you are so good-looking dressed up? I really believe you're getting fat. And there," she added, critically touching a place on the top of his head, "is a bald spot!"
"Anything else?" he murmured, with his eyes still on the sheet.
"Lots," answered Honora, pulling down the newspaper from before his face. "For one thing, I'm not going to allow you to be a bear any more. I don't mean a Stock Exchange bear, but a domestic bear—which is much worse. You've got to notice me once in a while. If you don't, I'll get another husband. That's what women do in these days, you know, when the one they have doesn't take the trouble to make himself sufficiently agreeable. I'm sure I could get another one quite easily," she declared.
He looked up at her as she stood facing him in the lamplight before the fire, and was forced to admit to himself that the boast was not wholly idle. A smile was on her lips, her eyes gleamed with health; her furs —of silver fox—were thrown back, the crimson roses pinned on her mauve afternoon gown matched the glow in her cheeks, while her hair mingled with the dusky shadows. Howard Spence experienced one of those startling, illuminating moments which come on occasions to the busy and self-absorbed husbands of his nation. Psychologists have a name for such a phenomenon. Ten minutes before, so far as his thoughts were concerned, she had not existed, and suddenly she had become a possession which he had not, in truth, sufficiently prized. Absurd though it was, the possibility which she had suggested aroused in him a slight uneasiness.
"You are a deuced good-looking woman, I'll say that for you, Honora," he admitted.
"Thanks," she answered, mockingly, and put her hands behind her back. "If I had only known you were going to settle down in Rivington and get fat and bald and wear dressing gowns and be a bear, I never should have married you—never, never, never! Oh, how young and simple and foolish I was! And the magnificent way you talked about New York, and intimated that you were going to conquer the world. I believed you. Wasn't I a little idiot not—to know that you'd make for a place like this and dig a hole and stay in it, and let the world go hang?"
He laughed, though it was a poor attempt. And she read in his eyes, which had not left her face, that he was more or less disturbed.
"I treat you pretty well, don't I, Honora?" he asked. There was an amorous, apologetic note in his voice that amused her, and reminded her of the honeymoon. "I give you all the money you want or rather—you take it,—and I don't kick up a row, except when the market goes to pieces—"
"When you act as though we'd have to live in Harlem—which couldn't be much worse," she interrupted. "And you stay in town all day and have no end of fun making money,—for you like to make money, and expect me to amuse myself the best part of my life with a lot of women who don't know enough to keep thin."
He laughed again, but still uneasily. Honora was still smiling.
"What's got into you?" he demanded. "I know you don't like Rivington, but you never broke loose this way before."
"If you stay here," said Honora, with a new firmness, "it will be alone. I can't see what you want with a wife, anyway. I've been thinking you over lately. I don't do anything for you, except to keep getting you cooks—and anybody could do that. You don't seem to need me in any possible way. All I do is to loiter around the house and read and play the piano, or go to New York and buy clothes for nobody to look at except strangers in restaurants. I'm worth more than that. I think I'll get married again."
"Great Lord, what are you talking about?" he exclaimed when he got his breath.
"I think I'll take a man next time," she continued calmly, "who has something to him, some ambition. The kind of man I thought I was getting when I took you only I shouldn't be fooled again. Women remarry a good deal in these days, and I'm beginning to see the reason why. And the women who have done it appear to be perfectly happy—much happier than they were at first. I saw one of them at Lily Dallam's this afternoon. She was radiant. I can't see any particular reason why a woman should be tied all her life to her husband's apron strings—or whatever he wears —and waste the talents she has. It's wicked, when she might be the making of some man who is worth something, and who lives somewhere."
Her husband got up.
"Jehosaphat!" he cried, "I never heard such talk in my life."
The idea that her love for him might have ebbed a little, or that she would for a moment consider leaving him, he rejected as preposterous, of course: the reputation which the majority of her sex had made throughout the ages for constancy to the marriage tie was not to be so lightly dissipated. Nevertheless, there was in her words a new undertone of determination he had never before heard—or, at least, noticed.
There was one argument, or panacea, which had generally worked like a charm, although some time had elapsed since last he had resorted to it. He tried to seize and kiss her, but she eluded him. At last he caught her, out of breath, in the corner of the room.
"Howard—you'll knock over the lamp—you'll ruin my gown—and then you'll have to buy me another. I DID mean it," she insisted, holding back her head; "you'll have to choose between Rivington and me. It's—it's an ultimatum. There were at least three awfully attractive men at Lily Dallam's tea—I won't tell you who they were—who would be glad to marry me in a minute."
He drew her down on the arm of his chair.
"Now that Lily has a house in town," he said weakly, "I suppose you think you've got to have one."
"Oh, Howard, it is such a dear house. I had no idea that so much could be done with so narrow a front. It's all French, with mirrors and big white panels and satin chairs and sofas, and a carved gilt piano that she got for nothing from a dealer she knows; and church candlesticks. The mirrors give it the effect of being larger than it really is. I've only two criticisms to make: it's too far from Fifth Avenue, and one can scarcely turn around in it without knocking something down—a photograph frame or a flower vase or one of her spindle-legged chairs. It was only a hideous, old-fashioned stone front when she bought it. I suppose nobody but Reggie Farwell could have made anything out of it."
"Who's Reggie Farwell?" inquired her husband.
"Howard, do you really mean to say you've never heard of Reggie Farwell? Lily was so lucky to get him—she says he wouldn't have done the house if he hadn't been such a friend of hers. And he was coming to the tea this afternoon—only something happened at the last minute, and he couldn't. She was so disappointed. He built the Maitlands' house, and did over the Cecil Graingers'. And he's going to do our house—some day."
"Why not right away?" asked Howard.
"Because I've made up my mind to be very, very reasonable," she replied."We're going to Quicksands for a while, first."
"To Quicksands!" he repeated. But in spite of himself he experienced a feeling of relief that she had not demanded a town mansion on the spot.
Honora sprang to her feet.
"Get up, Howard," she cried, "remember that we're going out for dinner-and you'll never be ready."
"Hold on," he protested, "I don't know about this Quicksands proposition.Let's talk it over a little more—"
"We'll talk it over another time," she replied. "But—remember my ultimatum. And I am only taking you there for your own good."
"For my own good!"
"Yes. To get you out of a rut. To keep you from becoming commonplace and obscure and—and everything you promised not to be when you married me," she retorted from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that disturbing and tantalizing fire. "It is my last desperate effort as a wife to save you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity." Wherewith she disappeared into her room and closed the door.
We read of earthquakes in the tropics and at the ends of the earth with commiseration, it is true, yet with the fond belief that the ground on which we have built is so firm that our own 'lares' and 'penates' are in no danger of being shaken down. And in the same spirit we learn of other people's domestic cataclysms. Howard Spence had had only a slight shock, but it frightened him and destroyed his sense of immunity. And during the week that followed he lacked the moral courage either to discuss the subject of Quicksands thoroughly or to let it alone: to put down his foot like a Turk or accede like a Crichton.
Either course might have saved him. One trouble with the unfortunate man was that he realized but dimly the gravity of the crisis. He had laboured under the delusion that matrimonial conditions were still what they had been in the Eighteenth Century—although it is doubtful whether he had ever thought of that century. Characteristically, he considered the troublesome affair chiefly from its business side. His ambition, if we may use so large a word for the sentiment that had filled his breast, had been coincident with his prenuptial passion for Honora. And she had contrived, after four years, in some mysterious way to stir up that ambition once more; to make him uncomfortable; to compel him to ask himself whether he were not sliding downhill; to wonder whether living at Quicksands might not bring him in touch with important interests which had as yet eluded him. And, above all,—if the idea be put a little more crudely and definitely than it occurred in his thoughts, he awoke to the realization that his wife was an asset he had hitherto utterly neglected. Inconceivable though it were (a middle-of-the-night reflection), if he insisted on trying to keep such a woman bottled up in Rivington she might some day pack up and leave him. One never could tell what a woman would do in these days. Les sacrees femmes.
We are indebted to Honora for this view of her husband's mental processes. She watched them, as it were, through a glass in the side of his head, and incidentally derived infinite amusement therefrom. With instinctive wisdom she refrained from tinkering.
An invitation to dine with the Dallams', in their own house, arrived a day or two after the tea which Honora had attended there. Although Lily had always been cordial, Honora thought this note couched in terms of unusual warmth. She was implored to come early, because Lily had so much to talk to her about which couldn't be written on account of a splitting headache. In moderate obedience to this summons Honora arrived, on the evening in question, before the ornamental ironwork of Mrs. Dallam's front door at a few minutes after seven o'clock. Honora paused in the spring twilight to contemplate the house, which stood out incongruously from its sombre, brownstone brothers and sisters with noisy basement kitchens. The Third Avenue Elevated, "so handy for Sid," roared across the gap scarcely a block away; and just as the door was opened the tightest of little blue broughams, pulled by a huge chestnut horse and driven by the tiniest of grooms in top boots, drew up at the curb. And out of it burst a resplendent lady—Mrs. Dallam.
"Oh, it's you, Honora," she cried. "Am I late? I'm so sorry. But I just couldn't help it. It's all Clara Trowbridge's fault. She insisted on my staying to meet that Renee Labride who dances so divinely in Lady Emmeline. She's sweet. I've seen her eight times." Here she took Honora's arm, and faced her towards the street. "What do you think of my turnout? Isn't he a darling?"
"Is he—full grown?" asked Honora.
Lilly Dallam burst out laughing.
"Bless you, I don't mean Patrick,—although I had a terrible time finding him. I mean the horse. Trixy Brent gave him to me before he went abroad."
"Gave him to you!" Honora exclaimed.
"Oh, he's always doing kind things like that, and he hadn't any use for him. My dear, I hope you don't think for an instant Trixy's in love with me! He's crazy about Lula Chandos. I tried so hard to get her to come to dinner to-night, and the Trowbridges' and the Barclays'. You've no idea how difficult it is in New York to get any one under two weeks. And so we've got just ourselves."
Honora was on the point of declaring, politely, that she was very glad, when Lily Dallam asked her how she liked the brougham.
"It's the image of Mrs. Cecil Grainger's, my dear, and I got it for a song. As long as Trixy gave me the horse, I told Sid the least he could do was to give me the brougham and the harness. Is Master Sid asleep?" she inquired of the maid who had been patiently waiting at the door. "I meant to have got home in time to kiss him."
She led Honora up the narrow but thickly carpeted stairs to a miniature boudoir, where Madame Adelaide, in a gilt rococo frame, looked superciliously down from the walls.
"Why haven't you been in to see me since my tea, Honora? You were such a success, and after you left they were all crazy to know something about you, and why they hadn't heard of you. My dear, how much did little Harris charge you for that dress? If I had your face and neck and figure I'd die before I'd live in Rivington. You're positively wasted, Honora. And if you stay there, no one will look at you, though you were as beautiful as Mrs. Langtry."
"You're rather good-looking yourself, Lily," said Honora.
"I'm ten years older than you, my dear, and I have to be so careful. Sid says I'm killing myself, but I've found a little massage woman who is wonderful. How do you like this dress?"
"All your things are exquisite."
"Do you think so?" cried Mrs. Dallam, delightedly.
Honora, indeed, had not perjured herself. Only the hypercritical, when Mrs. Dallam was dressed, had the impression of a performed miracle. She was the most finished of finished products. Her complexion was high and (be it added) natural, her hair wonderfully 'onduled', and she had withal the sweetest and kindest of smiles and the most engaging laughter in the world. It was impossible not to love her.
"Howard," she cried, when a little later they were seated at the table, "how mean of you to have kept Honora in a dead and alive place like Rivington all these years! I think she's an angel to have stood it. Men are beyond me. Do you know what an attractive wife you've got? I've just been telling her that there wasn't a woman at my tea who compared with her, and the men were crazy about her."
"That's the reason I live down there," proclaimed Howard, as he finished his first glass of champagne.
"Honora," demanded Mrs. Dallam, ignoring his bravado, "why don't you take a house at Quicksands? You'd love it, and you'd look simply divine in a bathing suit. Why don't you come down?"
"Ask Howard," replied Honora, demurely.
"Well, Lily, I'll own up I have been considering it a little," that gentleman admitted with gravity. "But I haven't decided anything. There are certain drawbacks—"
"Drawbacks!" exclaimed Mrs. Dallam. "Drawbacks at Quicksands! I'd like to know what they are. Don't be silly, Howard. You get more for your money there than any place I know." Suddenly the light of an inspiration came into her eyes, and she turned to her husband. "Sid, the Alfred Fern house is for rent, isn't it?"
"I think it must be, Lily," replied Mr. Dallam.
"Sometimes I believe I'm losing my mind," declared Mrs. Dallam. "What an imbecile I was not to think of it! It's a dear, Honora, not five minutes from the Club, with the sweetest furniture, and they just finished it last fall. It would be positively wicked not to take it, Howard. They couldn't have failed more opportunely. I'm sorry for Alfred, but I always thought Louise Fern a little snob. Sid, you must see Alfred down town the first thing in the morning and ask him what's the least he'll rent it for. Tell him I wish to know."
"But—my dear Lily—began Mr. Dallam apologetically.
"There!" complained his wife, "you're always raising objections to my most charming and sensible plans. You act as though you wanted Honora and Howard to stay in Rivington."
"My dear Lily!" he protested again. And words failing him, he sought by a gesture to disclaim such a sinister motive for inaction.
"What harm can it do?" she asked plaintively. "Howard doesn't have to rent the house, although it would be a sin if he didn't. Find out the rent in the morning, Sid, and we'll all four go down on Sunday and look at it, and lunch at the Quicksands Club. I'm sure I can get out of my engagement at Laura Dean's—this is so important. What do you say, Honora?"
"I think it would be delightful," said Honora.
To convey any adequate idea of the community familiarly known as Quicksands a cinematograph were necessary. With a pen we can only approximate the appearance of the shifting grains at any one time. Some households there were, indeed, which maintained a precarious though seemingly miraculous footing on the surface, or near it, going under for mere brief periods, only to rise again and flaunt men-servants in the face of Providence.
There were real tragedies, too, although a casual visitor would never have guessed it. For tragedies sink, and that is the end of them. The cinematograph, to be sure, would reveal one from time to time, coming like a shadow across an endless feast, and gone again in a flash. Such was what might appropriately be called the episode of the Alfred Ferns. After three years of married life they had come, they had rented; the market had gone up, they had bought and built—upon the sands. The ancient farmhouse which had stood on the site had been torn down as unsuited to a higher civilization, although the great elms which had sheltered it had been left standing, in grave contrast to the twisted cedars and stunted oaks so much in evidence round about.
The Ferns—or rather little Mrs. Fern—had had taste, and the new house reflected it. As an indication of the quality of imagination possessed by the owners, the place was called "The Brackens." There was a long porch on the side of the ocean, but a view of the water was shut off from it by a hedge which, during the successive ownerships of the adjoining property, had attained a height of twelve feet. There was a little toy greenhouse connecting with the porch (an "economy" indulged in when the market had begun to go the wrong way for Mr. Fern). Exile, although unpleasant, was sometimes found necessary at Quicksands, and even effective.
Above all things, however, if one is describing Quicksands, one must not be depressing. That is the unforgiveable sin there. Hence we must touch upon these tragedies lightly.
If, after walking through the entrance in the hedge that separated the Brackens from the main road, you turned to the left and followed a driveway newly laid out between young poplars, you came to a mass of cedars. Behind these was hidden the stable. There were four stalls, all replete with brass trimmings, and a box, and the carriage-house was made large enough for the break which Mr. Fern had been getting ready to buy when he had been forced, so unexpectedly, to change his mind.
If the world had been searched, perhaps, no greater contrast to Rivington could have been found than this delightful colony of quicksands, full of life and motion and colour, where everybody was beautifully dressed and enjoying themselves. For a whole week after her instalment Honora was in a continual state of excitement and anticipation, and the sound of wheels and voices on the highroad beyond the hedge sent her peeping to her curtains a dozen times a day. The waking hours, instead of burdens, were so many fleeting joys. In the morning she awoke to breathe a new, perplexing, and delicious perfume—the salt sea breeze stirring her curtains: later, she was on the gay, yellow-ochre beach with Lily Dallam, making new acquaintances; and presently stepping, with a quiver of fear akin to delight, into the restless, limitless blue water that stretched southward under a milky haze: luncheon somewhere, more new acquaintances, and then, perhaps, in Lily's light wood victoria to meet the train of trains. For at half-past five the little station, forlorn all day long in the midst of the twisted cedars that grew out of the heated sand, assumed an air of gayety and animation. Vehicles of all sorts drew up in the open space before it, wagonettes, phaetons, victorias, high wheeled hackney carts, and low Hempstead carts: women in white summer gowns and veils compared notes, or shouted invitations to dinner from carriage to carriage. The engine rolled in with a great cloud of dust, the horses danced, the husbands and the overnight guests, grimy and brandishing evening newspapers, poured out of the special car where they had sat in arm-chairs and talked stocks all the way from Long Island City. Some were driven home, it is true; some to the beach, and others to the Quicksands Club, where they continued their discussions over whiskey-and-sodas until it was time to have a cocktail and dress for dinner.
Then came the memorable evening when Lily Dallam gave a dinner in honour of Honora, her real introduction to Quicksands. It was characteristic of Lily that her touch made the desert bloom. Three years before Quicksands had gasped to hear that the Sidney Dallams had bought the Faraday house —or rather what remained of it.
"We got it for nothing," Lily explained triumphantly on the occasion ofHonora's first admiring view. "Nobody would look at it, my dear."
It must have been this first price, undoubtedly, that appealed to Sidney Dallam, model for all husbands: to Sidney, who had had as much of an idea of buying in Quicksands as of acquiring a Scotch shooting box. The "Faraday place" had belonged to the middle ages, as time is reckoned in Quicksands, and had lain deserted for years, chiefly on account of its lugubrious and funereal aspect. It was on a corner. Two "for rent" signs had fallen successively from the overgrown hedge: some fifty feet back from the road, hidden by undergrowth and in the tenebrous shades of huge larches and cedars, stood a hideous, two-storied house with a mansard roof, once painted dark red.
The magical transformation of all this into a sunny, smiling, white villa with red-striped awnings and well-kept lawns and just enough shade had done no little towards giving to Lily Dallam that ascendency which she had acquired with such startling rapidity in the community. When Honora and Howard drove up to the door in the deepening twilight, every window was a yellow, blazing square, and above the sound of voices rose a waltz from "Lady Emmeline" played with vigour on the piano. Lily Dallam greeted Honora in the little room which (for some unexplained reason) was known as the library, pressed into service at dinner parties as the ladies' dressing room.
"My dear, how sweet you look in that coral! I've been so lucky to-night," she added in Honora's ear; "I've actually got Trixy Brent for you."
Our heroine was conscious of a pleasurable palpitation as she walked with her hostess across the little entry to the door of the drawing-room, where her eyes encountered an inviting and vivacious scene. Some ten or a dozen guests, laughing and talking gayly, filled the spaces between the furniture; an upright piano was embedded in a corner, and the lady who had just executed the waltz had swung around on the stool, and was smiling up at a man who stood beside her with his hand in his pocket. She was a decided brunette, neither tall nor short, with a suggestion of plumpness.
"That's Lula Chandos," explained Lily Dallam in her usual staccato, following Honora's gaze, "at the piano, in ashes of roses. She's stopped mourning for her husband. Trixy told her to-night she'd discarded the sackcloth and kept the ashes. He's awfully clever. I don't wonder that she's crazy about him, do you? He's standing beside her."
Honora took a good look at the famous Trixy, who resembled a certain type of military Englishman. He had close-cropped hair and a close-cropped mustache; and his grey eyes, as they rested amusedly on Mrs. Chandos, seemed to have in them the light of mockery.
"Trixy!" cried his hostess, threading her way with considerable skill across the room and dragging Honora after her, "Trixy, I want to introduce you to Mrs. Spence. Now aren't you glad you came!"
It was partly, no doubt, by such informal introductions that Lily Dallam had made her reputation as the mistress of a house where one and all had such a good time. Honora, of course, blushed to her temples, and everybody laughed—even Mrs. Chandos.
"Glad," said Mr. Brent, with his eyes on Honora, "does not quite express it. You usually have a supply of superlatives, Lily, which you might have drawn on."
"Isn't he irrepressible?" demanded Lily Dallam, delightedly, "he's always teasing."
It was running through Honora's mind, while Lily Dallam's characteristic introductions of the other guests were in progress, that "irrepressible" was an inaccurate word to apply to Mr. Brent's manner. Honora could not define his attitude, but she vaguely resented it. All of Lily's guests had the air of being at home, and at that moment a young gentleman named Charley Goodwin, who was six feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds, was loudly demanding cocktails. They were presently brought by a rather harassed-looking man-servant.
"I can't get over how well you look in that gown, Lula," declared Mrs.Dallam, as they went out to dinner. "Trixy, what does she remind you of?"
"Cleopatra," cried Warry Trowbridge, with an attempt to be gallant.
"Eternal vigilance," said Mr. Brent, and they sat down amidst the laughter, Lily Dallam declaring that he was horrid, and Mrs. Chandos giving him a look of tender reproach. But he turned abruptly to Honora, who was on his other side.
"Where did you drop down from, Mrs. Spence?" he inquired.
"Why do you take it for granted that I have dropped?" she asked sweetly.
He looked at her queerly for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
"Because you are sitting next to Lucifer," he said. "It's kind of me to warn you, isn't it?"
"It wasn't necessary," replied Honora. "And besides, as a dinner companion, I imagine Lucifer couldn't be improved on."
He laughed again.
"As a dinner companion!" he repeated. "So you would limit Lucifer to dinners? That's rather a severe punishment, since we're neighbours."
"How delightful to have Lucifer as one's neighbour," said Honora, avoiding his eyes. "Of course I've been brought up to believe that he was always next door, so to speak, but I've never—had any proof of it until now."
"Proof!" echoed Mr. Brent. "Has my reputation gone before me?"
"I smell the brimstone," said Honora.
He derived, apparently, infinite amusement from this remark likewise.
"If I had known I was to have the honour of sitting here, I should have used another perfume," he replied. "I have several."
It was Honora's turn to laugh.
"They are probably for—commercial transactions, not for ladies," she retorted. "We are notoriously fond of brimstone, if it is not too strong. A suspicion of it."
Her colour was high, and she was surprised at her own vivacity. It seemed strange that she should be holding her own in this manner with the renowned Trixton Brent. No wonder, after four years of Rivington, that she tingled with an unwonted excitement.
At this point Mr. Brent's eye fell upon Howard, who was explaining something to Mrs. Trowbridge at the far end of the table.
"What's your husband like?" he demanded abruptly.
Honora was a little taken aback, but recovered sufficiently to retort:"You'd hardly expect me to give you an unprejudiced judgment."
"That's true," he agreed significantly.
"He's everything," added Honora, "that is to be expected in a husband."
"Which isn't much, in these days," declared Mr. Brent.
"On the contrary," said Honora.
"What I should like to know is why you came to Quicksands," said Mr.Brent.
"For a little excitement," she replied. "So far, I have not been disappointed. But why do you ask that question?" she demanded, with a slight uneasiness. "Why did you come here?"
"Oh," he said, "you must remember that I'm—Lucifer, a citizen of the world, at home anywhere, a sort of 'freebooter. I'm not here all the time—but that's no reflection on Quicksands. May I make a bet with you, Mrs. Spence?"
"What about?"
"That you won't stay in Quicksands more than six months," he answered.
"Why do you say that?" she asked curiously.
He shook his head.
"My experience with your sex," he declared enigmatically, "has not been a slight one."
"Trixy!" interrupted Mrs. Chandos at this juncture, from his other side, "Warry Trowbridge won't tell me whether to sell my Consolidated Potteries stock."
"Because he doesn't know," said Mr. Brent, laconically, and readdressed himself to Honora, who had, however, caught a glimpse of Mrs. Chandos' face.
"Don't you think it's time for you to talk to Mrs. Chandos?" she asked.
"What for?"
"Well, for one reason, it is customary, out of consideration for the hostess, to assist in turning the table."
"Lily doesn't care," he said.
"How about Mrs. Chandos? I have an idea that she does care."
He made a gesture of indifference.
"And how about me?" Honora continued. "Perhaps—I'd like to talk to Mr.Dallam."
"Have you ever tried it?" he demanded.
Over her shoulder she flashed back at him a glance which he did not return. She had never, to tell the truth, given her husband's partner much consideration. He had existed in her mind solely as an obliging shopkeeper with whom Lily had unlimited credit, and who handed her over the counter such things as she desired. And to-night, in contrast to Trixton Brent, Sidney Dallam suggested the counter more than ever before. He was about five and forty, small, neatly made, with little hands and feet; fast growing bald, and what hair remained to him was a jet black. His suavity of manner and anxious desire to give one just the topic that pleased had always irritated Honora.
Good shopkeepers are not supposed to have any tastes, predilections, or desires of their own, and it was therefore with no little surprise that, after many haphazard attempts, Honora discovered Mr, Dallam to be possessed by one all-absorbing weakness. She had fallen in love, she remarked, with little Sid on the beach, and Sidney Dallam suddenly became transfigured. Was she fond of children? Honora coloured a little, and said "yes." He confided to her, with an astonishing degree of feeling, that it had been the regret of his life he had not had more children. Nobody, he implied, who came to his house had ever exhibited the proper interest in Sid.
"Sometimes," he said, leaning towards her confidentially, "I slip upstairs for a little peep at him after dinner."
"Oh," cried Honora, "if you're going to-night mayn't I go with you? I'd love to see him in bed."
"Of course I'll take you," said Sidney Dallam, and he looked at her so gratefully that she coloured again.
"Honora," said Lily Dallam, when the women were back in the drawing-room, "what did you do to Sid? You had him beaming—and he hates dinner parties."
"We were talking about children," replied Honora, innocently.
"Children!"
"Yes," said Honora, "and your husband has promised to take me up to the nursery."
"And did you talk to Trixy about children, too?" cried Lily, laughing, with a mischievous glance at Mrs. Chandos.
"Is he interested in them?" asked Honora.
"You dear!" cried Lily, "you'll be the death of me. Lula, Honora wants to know whether Trixy is interested in children."
Mrs. Chandos, in the act of lighting a cigarette, smiled sweetly.
"Apparently he is," she said.
"It's time he were, if he's ever going to be," said Honora, just as sweetly.
Everybody laughed but Mrs. Chandos, who began to betray an intense interest in some old lace in the corner of the room.
"I bought it for nothing, my dear," said Mrs. Dallam, but she pinched Honora's arm delightedly. "How wicked of you!" she whispered, "but it serves her right."
In the midst of the discussion of clothes and house rents and other people's possessions, interspersed with anecdotes of a kind that was new to Honora, Sidney Dallam appeared at the door and beckoned to her.
"How silly of you, Sid!" exclaimed his wife; "of course she doesn't want to go."
"Indeed I do," protested Honora, rising with alacrity and following her host up the stairs. At the end of a hallway a nurse, who had been reading beside a lamp, got up smilingly and led the way on tiptoe into the nursery, turning on a shaded electric light. Honora bent over the crib. The child lay, as children will, with his little yellow head resting on his arm. But in a moment, as she stood gazing at him, he turned and opened his eyes and smiled at her, and she stooped and kissed him.
"Where's Daddy?" he demanded.
"We've waked him!" said Honora, remorsefully.
"Daddy," said the child, "tell me a story."
The nurse looked at Dallam reproachfully, as her duty demanded, and yet she smiled. The noise of laughter reached them from below.
"I didn't have any to-night," the child pleaded.
"I got home late," Dallam explained to Honora, and, looking at the nurse, pleaded in his turn; "just one."
"Just a tiny one," said the child.
"It's against all rules, Mr. Dallam," said the nurse, "but—he's been very lonesome to-day."
Dallam sat down on one side of him, Honora on the other.
"Will you go to sleep right away if I do, Sid?" he asked.
The child shut his eyes very tight.
"Like that," he promised.
It was not the Sidney Dallam of the counting-room who told that story, and Honora listened with strange sensations which she did not attempt to define.
"I used to be fond of that one when I was a youngster," he explained apologetically to her as they went out, and little Sid had settled himself obediently on the pillow once more. "It was when I dreamed," he added, "of less prosaic occupations than the stock market."
Sidney Dallam had dreamed!
Although Lily Dallam had declared that to leave her house before midnight was to insult her, it was half-past eleven when Honora and her husband reached home. He halted smilingly in her doorway as she took off her wrap and laid it over a chair.
"Well, Honora," he asked, "how do you like—the whirl of fashion?"
She turned to him with one of those rapid and bewildering movements that sometimes characterized her, and put her arms on his shoulders.
"What a dear old stay-at-home you were, Howard," she said. "I wonder what would have happened to you if I hadn't rescued you in the nick of time! Own up that you like—a little variety in life."
Being a man, he qualified his approval.
"I didn't have a bad time," he admitted. "I had a talk with Brent after dinner, and I think I've got him interested in a little scheme. It's a strange thing that Sid Dallam was never able to do any business with him. If I can put this through, coming to Quicksands will have been worth while." He paused a moment, and added: "Brent seems to have taken quite a shine to you, Honora."
She dropped her arms, and going over to her dressing table, unclasped a pin on the front of her gown.
"I imagine," she answered, in an indifferent tone, "that he acts so with every new woman he meets."
Howard remained for a while in the doorway, seemingly about to speak.Then he turned on his heel, and she heard him go into his own room.
Far into the night she lay awake, the various incidents of the evening, like magic lantern views, thrown with bewildering rapidity on the screen of her mind. At last she was launched into life, and the days of her isolation gone by forever. She was in the centre of things. And yet —well, nothing could be perfect. Perhaps she demanded too much. Once or twice, in the intimate and somewhat uproarious badinage that had been tossed back and forth in the drawing-room after dinner, her delicacy had been offended: an air of revelry had prevailed, enhanced by the arrival of whiskey-and-soda on a tray. And at the time she had been caught up by an excitement in the grip of which she still found herself. She had been aware, as she tried to talk to Warren Trowbridge, of Trixton Brent's glance, and of a certain hostility from Mrs. Chandos that caused her now to grow warm with a kind of shame when she thought of it. But she could not deny that this man had for her a fascination. There was in him an insolent sense of power, of scarcely veiled contempt for the company in which he found himself. And she asked herself, in this mood of introspection, whether a little of his contempt for Lily Dallam's guests had not been communicated from him to her.
When she had risen to leave, he had followed her into the entry. She recalled him vividly as he had stood before her then, a cigar in one hand and a lighted match in the other, his eyes fixed upon her with a singularly disquieting look that was tinged, however, with amusement. "I'm coming to see you," he announced.
"Do be careful," she had cried, "you'll burn yourself!"
"That," he answered, tossing away the match, "is to be expected."
She laughed nervously.
"Good night," he added, "and remember my bet."
What could he have meant when he had declared that she would not remain in Quicksands?
There was an orthodox place of worship at Quicksands, a temple not merely opened up for an hour or so on Sunday mornings to be shut tight during the remainder of the week although it was thronged with devotees on the Sabbath. This temple, of course, was the Quicksands Club. Howard Spence was quite orthodox; and, like some of our Puritan forefathers, did not even come home to the midday meal on the first day of the week. But a certain instinct of protest and of nonconformity which may have been remarked in our heroine sent her to St. Andrews-by-the-Sea—by no means so well attended as the house of Gad and Meni. She walked home in a pleasantly contemplative state of mind through a field of daisies, and had just arrived at the hedge m front of the Brackens when the sound of hoofs behind her caused her to turn. Mr. Trixton Brent, very firmly astride of a restive, flea-bitten polo pony, surveyed her amusedly.
"Where have you been?" said he.
"To church," replied Honora, demurely.
"Such virtue is unheard of in Quicksands."
"It isn't virtue," said Honora.
"I had my doubts about that, too," he declared.
"What is it, then?" she asked laughingly, wondering why he had such a faculty of stirring her excitement and interest.
"Dissatisfaction," was his prompt reply.
"I don't see why you say that," she protested.
"I'm prepared to make my wager definite," said he. "The odds are a thoroughbred horse against a personally knitted worsted waistcoat that you won't stay in Quicksands six months."
"I wish you wouldn't talk nonsense," said Honora, "and besides, I can't knit."
There was a short silence during which he didn't relax his disconcerting stare.
"Won't you come in?" she asked. "I'm sorry Howard isn't home."
"I'm not," he said promptly. "Can't you come over to my box for lunch?I've asked Lula Chandos and Warry Trowbridge."
It was not without appropriateness that Trixton Brent called his house the "Box." It was square, with no pretensions to architecture whatever, with a porch running all the way around it. And it was literally filled with the relics of the man's physical prowess cups for games of all descriptions, heads and skins from the Bitter Roots to Bengal, and masks and brushes from England. To Honora there was an irresistible and mysterious fascination in all these trophies, each suggesting a finished —and some perhaps a cruel—performance of the man himself. The cups were polished until they beat back the light like mirrors, and the glossy bear and tiger skins gave no hint of dying agonies.
Mr. Brent's method with women, Honora observed, more resembled the noble sport of Isaac Walton than that of Nimrod, but she could not deny that this element of cruelty was one of his fascinations. It was very evident to a feminine observer, for instance, that Mrs. Chandos was engaged in a breathless and altogether desperate struggle with the slow but inevitable and appalling Nemesis of a body and character that would not harmonize. If her figure grew stout, what was to become of her charm as an 'enfant gate'? Her host not only perceived, but apparently derived great enjoyment out of the drama of this contest. From self-indulgence to self-denial—even though inspired by terror—is a far cry. And Trixton Brent had evidently prepared his menu with a satanic purpose.
"What! No entree, Lula? I had that sauce especially for you."
"Oh, Trixy, did you really? How sweet of you!" And her liquid eyes regarded, with an almost equal affection, first the master and then the dish. "I'll take a little," she said weakly; "it's so bad for my gout."
"What," asked Trixton Brent, flashing an amused glance at Honora, "are the symptoms of gout, Lula? I hear a great deal about that trouble these days, but it seems to affect every one differently."
Mrs. Chandos grew very red, but Warry Trowbridge saved her.
"It's a swelling," he said innocently.
Brent threw back his head and laughed.
"You haven't got it anyway, Warry," he cried.
Mr. Trowbridge, who resembled a lean and greying Irish terrier, maintained that he had.
"It's a pity you don't ride, Lula. I understand that that's one of the best preventives—for gout. I bought a horse last week that would just suit you—an ideal woman's horse. He's taken a couple of blue ribbons this summer."
"I hope you will show him to us, Mr. Brent," exclaimed Honora, in a spirit of kindness.
"Do you ride?" he demanded.
"I'm devoted to it," she declared.
It was true. For many weeks that spring, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, she had gone up from Rivington to Harvey's Riding Academy, near Central Park. Thus she had acquired the elements of the equestrian art, and incidentally aroused the enthusiasm of a riding-master.
After Mrs. Chandos had smoked three of the cigarettes which her host specially imported from Egypt, she declared, with no superabundance of enthusiasm, that she was ready to go and see what Trixy had in the "stables." In spite of that lady's somewhat obvious impatience, Honora insisted upon admiring everything from the monogram of coloured sands so deftly woven on the white in the coach house, to the hunters and polo ponies in their rows of boxes. At last Vercingetorix, the latest acquisition of which Brent had spoken, was uncovered and trotted around the ring.
"I'm sorry, Trixy, but I've really got to leave," said Mrs. Chandos. "And I'm in such a predicament! I promised Fanny Darlington I'd go over there, and it's eight miles, and both my horses are lame."
Brent turned to his coachman.
"Put a pair in the victoria right away and drive Mrs. Chandos to Mrs.Darlington's," he said.
She looked at him, and her lip quivered.
"You always were the soul of generosity, Trixy, but why the victoria?"
"My dear Lula," he replied, "if there's any other carriage you prefer—?"
Honora did not hear the answer, which at any rate was scarcely audible. She moved away, and her eyes continued to follow Vercingetorix as he trotted about the tan-bark after a groom. And presently she was aware that Trixton Brent was standing beside her.
"What do you think of him?" he asked.
"He's adorable," declared Honora. Would you like to try him?"
"Oh—might I? Sometime?"
"Why not to-day—now?" he said. "I'll send him over to your house and have your saddle put on him."
Before Honora could protest Mrs. Chandos came forward.
"It's awfully sweet of you, Trixy, to offer to send me to Fanny's, but Warry says he will drive me over. Good-by, my dear," she added, holding out her hand to Honora.
"I hope you enjoy your ride."
Mr. Trowbridge's phaeton was brought up, Brent helped Mrs. Chandos in, and stood for a moment gazing after her. Amusement was still in his eyes as he turned to Honora.
"Poor Lula!" he said. "Most women could have done it better than that —couldn't they?"
"I think you were horrid to her," exclaimed Honora, indignantly. "It wouldn't have hurt you to drive her to Mrs. Darlington's."
It did not occur to her that her rebuke implied a familiarity at which they had swiftly but imperceptibly arrived.
"Oh, yes, it would hurt me," said he. "I'd rather spend a day in jail than drive with Lula in that frame of mind. Tender reproaches, and all that sort of thing, you know although I can't believe you ever indulge in them. Don't," he added.
In spite of the fact that she was up in arms for her sex, Honora smiled.
"Do you know," she said slowly, "I'm beginning to think you are a brute."
"That's encouraging," he replied.
"And fickle."
"Still more encouraging. Most men are fickle. We're predatory animals."
"It's just as well that I am warned," said Honora. She raised her parasol and picked up her skirts and shot him a look. Although he did not resemble in feature the great if unscrupulous Emperor of the French, he reminded her now of a picture she had once seen of Napoleon and a lady; the lady obviously in a little flutter under the Emperor's scrutiny. The picture had suggested a probable future for the lady.
"How long will it take you to dress?" he asked.
"To dress for what?"
"To ride with me."
"I'm not going to ride with you," she said, and experienced a tingle of satisfaction from his surprise.
"Why not?" he demanded.
"In the first place, because I don't want to; and in the second, becauseI'm expecting Lily Dallam."
"Lily never keeps an engagement," he said.
"That's no reason why I shouldn't," Honora answered.
"I'm beginning to think you're deuced clever," said he.
"How unfortunate for me!" she exclaimed.
He laughed, although it was plain that he was obviously put out. Honora was still smiling.
"Deuced clever," he repeated.
"An experienced moth," suggested Honora; "perhaps one that has been singed a little, once or twice. Good-by—I've enjoyed myself immensely."
She glanced back at him as she walked down the path to the roadway. He was still standing where she had left him, his feet slightly apart, his hands in the pockets of his riding breeches, looking after her.
Her announcement of an engagement with Mrs. Dallam had been, to put it politely, fiction. She spent the rest of the afternoon writing letters home, pausing at periods to look out of the window. Occasionally it appeared that her reflections were amusing. At seven o'clock Howard arrived, flushed and tired after his day of rest.
"By the way, Honora, I saw Trixy Brent at the Club, and he said you wouldn't go riding with him."
"Do you call him Trixy to his face?" she asked.
"What? No—but everyone calls him Trixy. What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing," she replied. "Only—the habit every one has in Quicksands of speaking of people they don't know well by their nicknames seems rather bad taste."
"I thought you liked Quicksands," he retorted. "You weren't happy until you got down here."
"It's infinitely better than Rivington," she said.
"I suppose," he remarked, with a little irritation unusual in him, "that you'll be wanting to go to Newport next."
"Perhaps," said Honora, and resumed her letter. He fidgeted about the room for a while, ordered a cocktail, and lighted a cigarette.
"Look here," he began presently, "I wish you'd be decent to Brent. He's a pretty good fellow, and he's in with James Wing and that crowd of big financiers, and he seems to have taken a shine to me probably because he's heard of that copper deal I put through this spring."
Honora thrust back her writing pad, turned in her chair, and faced him.
"How 'decent' do you wish me to be?" she inquired.
"How decent?" he repeated.
"Yes."
He regarded her uneasily, took the cocktail which the maid offered him, drank it, and laid down the glass.
He had had before, in the presence of his wife, this vague feeling of having passed boundaries invisible to him. In her eyes was a curious smile that lacked mirth, in her voice a dispassionate note that added to his bewilderment.
"What do you mean, Honora?"
"I know it's too much to expect of a man to be as solicitous about his wife as he is about his business," she replied. "Otherwise he would hesitate before he threw her into the arms of Mr. Trixton Brent. I warn you that he is very attractive to women."
"Hang it," said Howard, "I can't see what you're driving at. I'm not throwing you into his arms. I'm merely asking you to be friendly with him. It means a good deal to me—to both of us. And besides, you can take care of yourself. You're not the sort of woman to play the fool."
"One never can tell," said Honora, "what may happen. Suppose I fell in love with him?"
"Don't talk nonsense," he said.
"I'm not so sure," she answered, meditatively, "that it is nonsense. It would be quite easy to fall in love with him. Easier than you imagine. curiously. Would you care?" she added.
"Care!" he cried; "of course I'd care. What kind of rot are you talking?"
"Why would you care?"
"Why? What a darned idiotic question—"
"It's not really so idiotic as you think it is," she said. "Suppose I allowed Mr. Brent to make love to me, as he's very willing to do, would you be sufficiently interested to compete."
"To what?"
"To compete."
"But—but we're married."
She laid her hand upon her knee and glanced down at it.
"It never occurred to me until lately," she said, "how absurd is the belief men still hold in these days that a wedding-ring absolves them forever from any effort on their part to retain their wives' affections. They regard the ring very much as a ball and chain, or a hobble to prevent the women from running away, that they may catch them whenever they may desire—which isn't often. Am I not right?"
He snapped his cigarette case.
"Darn it, Honora, you're getting too deep for me!" he exclaimed. "You never liked those, Browning women down at Rivington, but if this isn't browning I'm hanged if I know what it is. An attack of nerves, perhaps. They tell me that women go all to pieces nowadays over nothing at all."
"That's just it," she agreed, "nothing at all!"
"I thought as much," he replied, eager to seize this opportunity of ending a conversation that had neither head nor tail, and yet was marvellously uncomfortable. "There! be a good girl, and forget it."
He stooped down suddenly to her face to kiss her, but she turned her face in time to receive the caress on the cheek.
"The panacea!" she said.
He laughed a little, boyishly, as he stood looking down at her.
"Sometimes I can't make you out," he said. "You've changed a good deal since I married you."
She was silent. But the thought occurred to her that a complete absorption in commercialism was not developing.
"If you can manage it, Honora," he added with an attempt at lightness, "I wish you'd have a little dinner soon, and ask Brent. Will you?"
"Nothing," she replied, "would give me greater pleasure."
He patted her on the shoulder and left the room whistling. But she sat where she was until the maid came in to pull the curtains and turn on the lights, reminding her that guests were expected.
…………………
Although the circle of Mr. Brent's friends could not be said to include any university or college presidents, it was, however, both catholic and wide. He was hail fellow, indeed, with jockeys and financiers, great ladies and municipal statesmen of good Irish stock. He was a lion who roamed at large over a great variety of hunting grounds, some of which it would be snobbish to mention; for many reasons he preferred Quicksands: a man-eater, a woman-eater, and extraordinarily popular, nevertheless. Many ladies, so it was reported, had tried to tame him: some of them he had cheerfully gobbled up, and others after the briefest of inspections, disdainfully thrust aside with his paw.
This instinct for lion taming, which the most spirited of women possess, is, by the way, almost inexplicable to the great majority of the male sex. Honora had it, as must have been guessed. But however our faith in her may be justified by the ridiculous ease of her previous conquests, we cannot regard without trepidation her entrance into the arena with this particular and widely renowned king of beasts. Innocence pitted against sophistry and wile and might.
Two of the preliminary contests we have already witnessed. Others, more or less similar, followed during a period of two months or more. Nothing inducing the excessive wagging of tongues,—Honora saw to that, although Mrs. Chandos kindly took the trouble to warn our heroine,—a scene for which there is unfortunately no space in this chronicle; an entirely amicable, almost honeyed scene, in Honora's boudoir. Nor can a complete picture of life at Quicksands be undertaken. Multiply Mrs. Dallam's dinner-party by one hundred, Howard Silence's Sundays at the Club by twenty, and one has a very fair idea of it. It was not precisely intellectual. "Happy," says Montesquieu, "the people whose annals are blank in history's book." Let us leave it at that.
Late one afternoon in August Honora was riding homeward along the ocean road. The fragrant marshes that bordered it were a vivid green under the slanting rays of the sun, and she was gazing across them at the breakers crashing on the beach beyond. Trixton Brent was beside her.
"I wish you wouldn't stare at me so," she said, turning to him suddenly; "it is embarrassing."
"How did you know I was looking at you?" he asked.
"I felt it."
He drew his horse a little nearer.
"Sometimes you're positively uncanny," she added.
He laughed.
"I rather like that castles-in-Spain expression you wore," he declared.
"Castles in Spain?"
"Or in some other place where the real estate is more valuable. Certainly not in Quicksands."
"You are uncanny," proclaimed Honora, with conviction.
"I told you you wouldn't like Quicksands," said he.
"I've never said I didn't like it," she replied. "I can't see why you assume that I don't."
"You're ambitious," he said. "Not that I think it a fault, when it's more or less warranted. Your thrown away here, and you know it."
She made him a bow from the saddle.
"I have not been without a reward, at least," she answered, and looked at him.
"I have," said he.
Honora smiled.
"I'm going to be your good angel, and help you get out of it," he continued.
"Get out of what?"
"Quicksands."
"Do you think I'm in danger of sinking?" she asked. "And is it impossible for me to get out alone, if I wished to?"
"It will be easier with my help," he answered. "You're clever enough to realize that—Honora."
She was silent awhile.
"You say the most extraordinary things," she remarked presently."Sometimes I think they are almost—"
"Indelicate," he supplied.
She coloured.
"Yes, indelicate."
"You can't forgive me for sweeping away your rose-coloured cloud of romance," he declared, laughing. "There are spades in the pack, however much you may wish to ignore 'em. You know very well you don't like these Quicksands people. They grate on your finer sensibilities, and all that sort of thing. Come, now, isn't it so?"