now you are flippant."
"Flippant, serious, moral, immoral," cried Nadine, "do not label me like luggage. You will tell me my destination next, shall we call it Abraham's bosom? Dear Hugh, you enrage me sometimes. Chiefly you enrage me because you have such an angelic temper yourself. I am not sure that an angelic temper is an advantage: it is always set fair, and there are no surprises. Ah, how it all leads round to that: there are no surprises: I understand you too well. I am very sorry. Do me the justice to believe that. Really I believe that I am as sorry that I can't marry you as you are."
Hugh got up.
"I don't think I do quite believe that," he said. "And now as regards the immediate future. I think I shall go away to-morrow."
This time he succeeded in surprising her.
"Himmel, but why?" she said.
"If you understood me as well as you say, you would know," he said. "I don't find my own heart a satisfactory diet. Of course, if I thought you would miss me—"
Nadine was quite silent for a moment.
"You shall go if you like, of course," she said. "But you do me the most frightful injustice: you understand nothing about me if you think I should not miss you. You cannot be so dull as not to know that I should miss you more than if everybody else went, literally everybody, leaving me alone. But go if you wish."
She walked across to the window, which Hugh had thrown open, and leaned out. A moon rode high in mid-sky, and to the West a quarter of a mile away and far below the sea glimmered like a shield of dim silver. Below the window the ground sloped sharply away down to the gray tumbled sand dunes that fringed the coast, and all lay blurred and melted under the uncertain light. And when she turned round again Hugh saw that her eyes were blurred and melted also.
"Do exactly as you please, Hughie," she said.
He laughed.
"Would you be surprised if I did not go?" he asked.
She came towards him with both hands out.
"Ah, that is dear of you," she said. "Look out of the window with me a moment: how dim and mysterious. There is my moon which I want so much, too. I will build altars and burn incense to any god who will give it me. If only I knew what it was. My moon, I mean! Now perhaps as it is nearly two o'clock, we had better go to bed, Hughie. And I am so sorry that things are as they are."
Chapter II
It had been said, by Edith Arbuthnot, perhaps unkindly, but with sufficient humor to neutralize the acidity, that there was always somebody awake day and night in Dodo's house tending the flame of egoistic introspection. Edith did not generally use long words, but chose them carefully when she indulged in polysyllables. She had not been so careful in the choice of her confidant, for she had fired this withering criticism at her son Berts, who in the true spirit of an affectionate nephew instantly repeated it to Dodo, who had roared with laughter and sent Edith an enormous telegram (costing nine shillings and a halfpenny, including sixpence for a paid reply in case Edith wanted to continue the discussion) describing a terrible accident that had just happened to herself.
"A most extraordinary and tragic affair" (this was all written out in full) "has just occurred at Meering at the house of Princess Waldenech. The unfortunate lady has just died of a sudden though not unexpected attack of spontaneous egoism. Loud screams were heard from her room, and Mr. Bertie Arbuthnot, son of the celebrated Edith Arbuthnot, the musical composer, rushed in to find the princess enveloped in sheets of blue flame. The efforts made to quench her were of no avail and in a few moments all that was left of her was a small handful of ashes, which curiously enough, as they cooled, assumed the shape of a capital 'I.' Fear is felt that this outbreak may prove to be contagious, and all those who have been in contact with the combusted princess are busy disinfecting themselves by talking about each other. It is believed that Mrs. Arbuthnot has begun to write a funeral march for her friend, for whom she felt an adoring affection amounting almost to worship, in the unusual key of ten sharps and eleven flats. It is in brisk waltz time and all the performers will blow their own trumpets. She is sending copies to nearly all the crowned heads of Europe."
Edith's reply was equally characteristic.
"Dodo, I love you."
The truth in Edith's criticism was certainly exemplified in the night of which we are speaking, for Hugh did not leave Nadine's room, where she had been engaged on the self-analysis given in the last chapter till two o'clock, and at that precise moment Dodo, who had gone to bed more than an hour before, woke up and began thinking about herself with uncommon intensity. And indeed there was sufficient to think about in the circumstances with which she had at this moment allowed herself to be surrounded. For the last two days, the husband whom she had divorced with such extreme facility had been staying with her, and to-morrow, directly on his departure, Jack Chesterford, to whom she had been engaged when she ran away with the husband she had just divorced, was arriving. All her life Dodo had liked drama, as long as it occurred outside the walls of English theaters, but better than the theaters even of Paris were the dramas which came into real life, especially when you could not possibly tell (even though you were acting yourself) what was going to happen next. Best of all she liked acting herself, having a part to play, without the slightest idea what she or anybody else was going to do or say.
Dodo's zest for life did not decrease with years, nor did her interest in it in the least diminish as the time of her youth began to recede into horizons far behind her. For all the time other horizons were getting closer to her, and she could imagine herself being quite old—"as old as Grannie" in fact—without any of the tragic envy of past years that so often make wormwood of the present. She had indeed settled the mode of her procedure for those years, which were still far enough off, with some exactitude, and was quite determined to have a mob-cap with a blue riband in it, and gold-rimmed spectacles. Also she would read Thomas à Kempis a great deal,—she had read a little already, and was now deliberately keeping the rest until she was seventy—and walk about her garden with a tall cane and pick lavender. She had, moreover, promised herself to make no attempts at sprightliness or to have her hair dyed, since one of the few classes of women whom she really objected to were those whom she called grizzly kittens, who dabbed at you with their rheumatic old paws, and pretended that they had no need of spectacles, though it was quite clear they could not read the very largest print. But she fully intended to remain exceedingly happy when those years came, for happiness so it seemed to her was a gift that came from within and could not be taken from you by any amount of external calamities or accumulation of decades. Certainly in the years that had passed she had had her share of annoyances, and in support of her theory with regard to happiness it must be confessed that they had not deprived her of one atom of it. Her late husband's conduct, for instance, had for years been of the most disagreeable kind, and she had borne with it not in the least like a tearful lamb but more like a cheerful lion. It had not in the least discouraged her with life in general, but only disgusted her with him. For the last two years before she got her divorce, he had been, as she expressed it, "too Bacchic for anything," and she had sent Nadine away from their homes in Austria to live with a variety of old friends in England. Eventually Dodo had decided that she would waste no more time with her husband and got her freedom coupled with an extremely handsome allowance. She continued to call herself "Princess Waldenech," because it was still rather pleasant being a Princess, and Waldenech told her that, as far as he was concerned, she might call herself "Dowager-Empress Waldenech," or anything else she chose.
So
