“Nothing!” she answered. “You know I never theorize about things. What’s the use of it?”
“Practical, steady, unemotional Alice!” laughed Mrs. West; but Maddison knew better, for he caught a glimpse of a look of contemptuous scorn before Miss Lane turned away again to the window.
“Where are you going to put up?” Maddison asked.
“At the Metropole, it’s amusing,” answered Mrs. West. “You must come in and dine with us.”
“Big anything,” interjected Maddison, “except when Nature provides them. Most of men’s big things are vulgar failures. London, for example, you needn’t go farther.”
“Is a bad example,” rejoined West. “That example won’t prove your point: just the opposite. On the whole, London is a success; it’s the most comfortable, most luxurious and most beautiful city in the world.”
“And the most comfortless, most squalid, and most ugly,” said Maddison. “That’s where London is such a dismal failure; she’s just like a horse with an uncertain temper: one moment an angel, the next a devil.”
“Or you can put it another way and draw another conclusion; London has just that charm which belongs to a woman—you’re never quite certain of her—at least if she’s worth bothering about. It may be a scratch, it may be a kiss.”
“I don’t like your talking that way, Phil,” said Mrs. West; “you know you don’t mean it.”
“It’d be too stupid if we only said what we meant; most of us mean such commonplaces.”
Mrs. West picked up a magazine, and neither of the men feeling inclined to talk, the conversation dropped.
West was glad of Maddison’s company and pleased that he was to be a neighbor. The portrait-painting would occupy some of that time which Agatha found weighing so heavy on her hands, and would relieve him from being always called upon to lighten her burden and to listen to her complaints. He had been accustomed for years past to have his own way with those around him, and the women with whom he had chiefly mixed had been those who must please to live. Now and again he had felt the need for a settled home and had vaguely contemplated matrimony. But the idea had not crystallized until last spring he had met Agatha, who seemed to offer him all that he wanted in a wife—good looks, good temper, good nature. The love-making had been quick and strong; the engagement brief. Now, a few months after their marriage, he was beginning to understand the nature of his acquisition wholly he thought, forgetting that a man has never yet entirely understood a woman any more than any woman has entirely understood a man. We set out to judge others by their motives, which we hope to trace from their actions, but half of what we do in life is purposeless, merely impulsive, and the other half unintentional. It was West’s dangerous pride to feel convinced that he owned the gift of seeing into the hearts and souls of men and women. He had come to the conclusion that good looks were all his wife’s endowment, and that the good nature would not stand against the test of self-sacrifice in any degree however small, and that the good temper was not proof against disappointment and contradiction. Once or twice lately she had asked him for extravagances which he told her he considered unnecessary, which when she pressed him he said he could not afford, his means not being limitless. He did not add that at the moment it would have been more correct to say that his income was by no means so large as the world believed it to be, one or two speculations having turned out considerable losses. He was not embarrassed as yet, but the next few months would be full of anxiety, with another brilliant success or a startling failure at the end of them. He had never before felt any desire to share his business worries with anyone, had never, in fact, had anyone with whom he was tempted to do so, but now to a certain degree it irritated him to know that if he had desired to confide in Agatha it would lead to no good result; the mere fact that she was not his helpmeet made him wish for such an one.