He made a good-humoredly satirical little bow. "I think you are
charming," said he. "It would be a waste of time to look at or to think
of anyone else when oneself is the most charming and interesting person
in the world. Still--" He put into his face and voice a suggestion of
gravity that caught her utmost attention--"if one is to get anywhere, is
to win consideration from others--and happiness for oneself--one simply
must do a little thinking about others--occasionally."
Her eyes lowered. A faint color tinged her cheeks.
"The reason most of us are so uncomfortable--downright unhappy most of
the time--is that we never really take our thoughts off our precious
fascinating selves. The result is that some day we find that the
liking--and friendship--and love--of those around us has limits--and we
are left severely alone. Of course, if one has a great deal of money,
one can buy excellent imitations of liking and friendship and even
love--I ought to say, especially love----"
The color flamed in her face.
"But," he went on, "if one is in modest circumstances or poor, one has
to take care."
"Or dependent," she said, with one of those unexpected flashes of subtle
intelligence that so complicated the study of her character. He had been
talking to amuse himself rather than with any idea of her understanding.
Her sudden bright color and her two words--"or dependent"--roused him to
see that she thought he was deliberately giving her a savage lecture
from the cover of general remarks. "With the vanity of the typical
woman," he said to himself, "she always imagines _she_ is the subject of
everyone's thought and talk."
"Or dependent," said he to her, easily. "I wasn't thinking of you, but
yours _is_ a case in point. Come, now--nothing to look blue about! Here's
something to eat. No, it's for the next table."
"You won't let me explain," she protested, between the prudence of
reproach and the candor of anger.
"There's nothing to explain," replied he. "Don't bother about the
mistakes of yesterday. Remember them--yes. If one has a good memory, to
forget is impossible--not to say unwise. But there ought to be no more
heat or sting in the memory of past mistakes than in the memory of last
year's mosquito bites."
The first course of the supper arrived. Her nervousness vanished, and he
got far away from the neighborhood of the subjects that, even in
remotest hint, could not but agitate her. And as the food and the wine
asserted their pacific and beatific sway, she and he steadily moved into
better and better humor with each other. Her beauty grew until it had
him thinking that never, not in the most spiritual feminine conceptions
of the classic painters, had he seen a loveliness more ethereal. Her
skin was so exquisite, the coloring of her hair and eyes and of her lips
was so delicately fine that it gave her the fragility of things
bordering upon the supernal--of rare exotics, of sunset and moonbeam
effects. No, he had been under no spell of illusion as to her beauty. It
was a reality--the more fascinating because it waxed and waned not with
regularity of period but capriciously.
He began to look round furtively, to see what effect this wife of his
was producing on others. These last few months, through prudence as much
as through pride, he had been cultivating the habit of ignoring his
surroundings; he would not invite cold salutations or obvious avoidance
of speaking. He now discovered many of his former associates--and his
vanity dilated as he noted how intensely they were interested in his
wife.
Some men of ability have that purest form of egotism which makes one
profoundly content with himself, genuinely indifferent to the approval
or the disapproval of others. Norman's vanity had a certain amount of
alloy. He genuinely disdained his fellow-men--their timidity, their
hypocrisy, their servility, their limited range of ideas. He was
indifferent to the verge of insensibility as to their adverse criticism.
But at the same time it was necessary to his happiness that he get from
them evidences of their admiration and envy. With that amusing hypocrisy
which tinges all human nature, he concealed from himself the
satisfaction, the joy even, he got out of the showy side of his
position. And no feature of his infatuation for Dorothy surprised him so
much as the way it rode rough shod and reckless over his snobbishness.
With the fading of infatuation had come many reflections upon the
practical aspects of what he had done. It pleased him with himself to
find that, in this first test, he had not the least regret, but on the
contrary a genuine pride in the courageous independence he had
shown--another and strong support to his conviction of his superiority
to his fellow-men. He might be somewhat snobbish--who was not?--who else
in his New York was less than supersaturated with snobbishness? But
snobbishness, the determining quality in the natures of all the women
and most of the men he knew, had shown itself one of the incidental
qualities in his own nature. After all, reflected he, it took a man, a
good deal of a man, to do what he had done, and not to regret it, even
in the hour of disillusionment. And it must be said for this egotistic
self-approval of his that like all his judgments there was sound merit
of truth in it. The vanity of the nincompoop is ridiculous. The vanity
of the man of ability is amusing and no doubt due to a defective point
of view upon the proportions of the universe; but it is not without
excuse, and those who laugh might do well to discriminate even as they
guffaw.
Looking discreetly about, Norman was suddenly confronted by the face of
Josephine Burroughs, only two tables away.
Until their eyes squarely met he did not know she was there, or even in
America. Before he could make a beginning of glancing away, she gave him
her sweetest smile and her friendliest bow. And Dorothy, looking to see
to whom he was speaking, was astonished to receive the same radiance of
cordiality. Norman was pleased at the way his wife dealt with the
situation. She returned both bow and smile in her own quiet, slightly
reserved way of gentle dignity.
"Who was that, speaking?" asked she.
"Miss Burroughs. You must remember her."
He noted it as characteristic that she said, quite sincerely: "Oh, so it
is. I didn't remember her. That is the girl you were engaged to."
"Yes--'the nice girl uptown,'" said he.
"I didn't like her," said Dorothy, with evident small interest in the
subject. "She was vain."
"You mean you didn't like her way of being vain," suggested Norman.
"Everyone is vain; so, if we disliked for vanity we should dislike
everyone."
"Yes, it was her way. And just now she spoke to us both, as if she were
doing us a favor."
"Gracious, it's called," said he. "What of it? It does us no harm and
gives her about the only happiness she's got."
[Illustration: "At Josephine's right sat a handsome young foreigner."]
Norman, without seeming to do so, noted the rest of the Burroughs party.
At Josephine's right sat a handsome young foreigner, and it took small
experience of the world to discover that he was paying court to her, and
that she was pleased and flattered. Norman asked the waiter who he was,
and learned that he came from the waiter's own province of France, was
the Duc de Valdome. At first glance Norman had thought him
distinguished. Afterward he discriminated. There are several kinds or
degrees of distinction. There is distinction of race, of class, of
family, of dress, of person. As Frenchman, as aristocrat, as a scion of
the ancient family of Valdome, as a specimen of tailoring and valeting,
Miss Burroughs's young man was distinguished. But in his own proper
person he was rather insignificant. The others at the table were
Americans. Following Miss Burroughs's cue, they sought an opportunity to
speak friendlily to Norman--and he gave it them. His acknowledgment of
those effusive salutations was polite but restrained.
"They are friends of yours?" said Dorothy.
"They were," said he. "And they may be again--when they are friends of
_ours_."
"I'm not very good at making friends," she warned him. "I don't like
many people." This time her unconscious and profound egotism pleased
him. Evidently it did not occur to her that she should be eager to be
friends with those people on any terms, that the only question was
whether they would receive her.