The black arm of a waiter came between them, and the woman let an
abstracted gaze stray idly across the shimmering field of the table,
while the man at her side ceased not to remark with glowing appreciation
the perfection of her gesture, at once so gracious, spirited, and
reserved.
Never one to wear her heart on her sleeve, Lucinda. Look at her now: Who
would ever guess she had lived to learn much, to unlearn more, in so
brief a term of married life? Surely the sweet lift of her head, the
shadowy smile that lurked ever about her lips, the exquisite poise of
that consummate body bespoke neither disillusionment nor discontent. And
who should say the dream was not a happy one that clouded the accustomed
clearness of her eyes?
Unclouded and serene once more, these turned again his way.
"It's like you, Dobbin, to start making love to me all over again,
precisely as if my being married meant nothing, in the first minutes of
our first meeting in five years, without offering to tell me a single
thing about yourself."
"Nothing much to tell. Everybody knows, when you engaged yourself to
marry Druce, I rode off to the wars. Oh, for purely selfish motives! If
I'd stayed, I'd have made a stupid exhibition of myself one way or
another, taken to drink or something equally idiotic. So vanity prompted
me to blaze a trail across the waters for my beloved country to follow
when its hour struck."
"And when the war was over, what did you then?"
"Knocked about a bit with some pals I'd picked up."
"We heard you'd taken up ranching in the Argentine, and made a tidy
fortune."
"I didn't do badly, that's a fact. But what is a man profited if he
shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
"Please don't look at me as if I knew the answer."
"It's a question we've all got to face, soon or late."
"You forget the life one leads: a studied attempt to forget that such a
question ever was asked."
"Find it succeeds?"
"Only part of the time, at best. But is one to understand you lost your
soul in the Argentine? It sounds so amusingly immoral."
"At least I realized down there my soul was in a fair way to prove a
total loss. We were rather out of the world, you know, away back from
anywhere; so I had lots of time to think, and learned I hadn't found
what I'd gone to France to seek; that there'd been nothing really
elevating or heroic about the war, only sound and fury; in other words
that, when all was said and done, you were all that had ever really
mattered. So I sold out and shipped for home."
"Hoping to find me unhappy enough with Bel----?"
"That's unworthy of you, Cinda. No: simply to be in the same world with
you."
After a little Mrs. Bellamy Druce said severely: "Dobbin, if you keep on
that tack, you will make me cross with you; and that wouldn't be nice,
when I'm so glad to see you. Let's talk about anything else. How does
New York look to an exile of long standing? Much changed?"
"Oh, I don't know. Skirts and morals both a bit higher, jazz a little
more so, Prohibition just what one expected, society even more loosely
constituted--a vast influx of new people. Time was when it would have
seemed odd to see a strange face at one of the Sedley's dinners. But
tonight--I don't know half these people. Astonishing lot of pretty girls
seem to have sprung up since my time. Who's the raving beauty on Bill
Sedley's right?"
"Amelie Severn, Amelie Cleves that was before she married. Surely you
remember her."
Daubeney stared in unaffected wonder.
"Good heavens! she was in long dresses when I saw her last."
"Pretty creature, don't you think?"
"Rather. Can't blame the chap next her for his open infatuation."
Laughter thrilled in Lucinda's reply: "Why, don't you recognize him?
That's Bel."
As if the diminutive pronounced in the clear accents of his wife had
carried through the murmur of talk, Bellamy Druce looked up. Perceiving
Lucinda's smile at the end of an aisle of shaded lights, he smiled in
turn, but with the muscles of his face alone. And looking from him to
the flushed and charming countenance of the young woman on his left,
bending low over her plate to hide confusion engendered by Bel's latest
audacity, Lucinda thought, with a faint pang, more of impatience than of
jealousy: _He's in love again._