“Well, you know, I don’t smoke—my wife doesn’t let me,” said St. George, looking for a place to sit down. “It’s very good for me—very good for me. Let us take that sofa.”
“No no—her not letting me. It’s a great thing to have a wife who’s so sure of all the things one can do without. One might never find them out one’s self. She doesn’t allow me to touch a cigarette.” They took possession of a sofa at a distance from the group of smokers, and St. George went on: “Have you got one yourself?”
“No; and yet I’d give up my cigarette for one.”
“You’d give up a good deal more than that,” St. George returned. “However, you’d get a great deal in return. There’s a something to be said for wives,” he added, folding his arms and crossing his outstretched legs. He declined tobacco altogether and sat there without returning fire. His companion stopped smoking, touched by his courtesy; and after all they were out of the fumes, their sofa was in a far-away corner. It would have been a mistake, St. George went on, a great mistake for them to have separated without a little chat; “for I know all about you,” he said, “I know you’re very remarkable. You’ve written a very distinguished book.”
“Why, my dear fellow, it’s in the air, it’s in the papers, it’s everywhere.” St. George spoke with the immediate familiarity of a confrère—a tone that seemed to his neighbour the very rustle of the laurel. “You’re on all men’s lips and, what’s better, on all women’s. And I’ve just been reading your book.”
“Just? You hadn’t read it this afternoon,” said Overt.
“I think you should know how I know it,” the young man laughed.
“No indeed—she led me rather to suppose you had.”
“Yes—that’s much more what she’d do. Doesn’t she shed a rosy glow over life? But you didn’t believe her?” asked St. George.
“Did I pretend? did I pretend badly?” But without waiting for an answer to this St. George went on: “You ought always to believe such a girl as that—always, always. Some women are meant to be taken with allowances and reserves; but you must take _her_ just as she is.”
Something in his tone appeared to excite on his companion’s part a momentary sense of the absurd; perhaps it was the air of deliberation attending this judgement. St. George broke into a laugh to reply. “It’s the best thing you can do with her. She’s a rare young lady! In point of fact, however, I confess I hadn’t read you this afternoon.”