“Yes, but not servility—not crushing every bit of originality and decency from a chap—that girl’s eyes look you through!”
“Where would you have been if not for me?” Lissa was holding him half by force. “Who helped you when you had the fever? Who introduced you to Newport, who—”
Mark threw off her arm roughly. “Stop! Sometimes I wish you’d let me find my own gait in my own way—maybe it wouldn’t be dancing—”
Lissa burst into effective sobs. “Don’t say you want to be a horrid old lawyer or sawbones! Why is it so many wonderful men have loved me, yet I give my heart to a sulky boy that cannot appreciate what it means—why is it?” she demanded of the empty absinthe glass.
Mark almost laughed. “I’ll play fair,” he said doggedly, “but I do the coast tour in April.”
“Which might be a good thing. I thought you didn’t want constancy, did you tell Thurley so—try to make her see your death-in-life stuff?”
“No, you’ve been drinking and I’ve been thinking. You know, Lissa, it’s well enough to play off a few weeks of nonsense abroad; something about Monaco and Florence get into your blood. But, after all, a fellow must think ahead and so ought a woman. I want to be the soap-and-water-washed sort I was. Makes me wish I hadn’t danced a step—had a hammer-toe or a club-foot so I couldn’t!”
“You’ve been talking to Bliss,” she said sharply.
Lissa threw back her head and closed her eyes. “Have I wasted the finest love of my live on a cad?” she asked of some unseen presence. “Have I told my secrets, the secrets of my inner shrine—”
“Not inner shrine,” Mark could not refrain from adding, “inner shrink!”
Lissa sprang to her feet. “You young idiot,” she said between set teeth, “you know I’ll not let you go until I’m ready to—I never do—I’ll show the whole pack of prudes that I can beat their game—”
Then the cad in the boy, which is in every boy, came to the surface and battled for supremacy in his handsome face right and wrong; he smiled in smug fashion symbolic of the fact that he had passed up the struggle.
“Maybe I’ve just wanted to see how you cared,” he suggested. “Got any more of that stuff to drink?” He sat on the tête-à-tête and, waiting until she poured it out, let him celebrate the defeat of his better half. “My word, Thurley has a long road to go!”