Ideas were all very
well--no one would object to as many as you liked, in their proper
place--the dinner-table, for example. But to fall in love, if indeed it
were so, with a man who not only had ideas, but an inclination to live
up to them, and on them, and on nothing else, seemed to Lord Dennis
'outre'.
She had followed him to the wall, and he looked--at her dubiously.
"To rest in the waters of Lethe, Babs? By the way, seen anything of our
friend Mr. Courtier? Very picturesque--that Quixotic theory of life!"
And in saying that, his voice (like so many refined voices which have
turned their backs on speculation) was triple-toned-mocking at ideas,
mocking at itself for mocking at ideas, yet showing plainly that at
bottom it only mocked at itself for mocking at ideas, because it would
be, as it were, crude not to do so.
But Barbara did not answer his question, and began to speak of other
things. And all that afternoon and evening she talked away so lightly
that Lord Dennis, but for his instinct, would have been deceived.
That wonderful smiling mask--the inscrutability of Youth--was laid aside
by her at night. Sitting at her window, under the moon, 'a gold-bright
moth slow-spinning up the sky,' she watched the darkness hungrily, as
though it were a great thought into whose heart she was trying to see.
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