“Oh, I love to believe in goodness,” she exclaimed, “although I may not practise every virtue myself. There would be no sunshine in a purely wicked world.” She plucked up courage and looked him in the face.
“Do you think I, for instance, am just one mass of badness?”
“My dear Mrs. Fontaine,” replied the pessimist, with his courtly smile, “you must not crush me by using the privilege of your sex—arguing from general to particular.”
“I believe,” said he, with a little inclination of his head, “all that Lady Louisa has been telling me.”
The talk ran for awhile in lighter channels. Lady Louisa and Huckaby who had been discussing cookery—he had held her in watery-mouthed attention while he gave her from memory Izaac Walton’s recipe for roasting a jack—joined in the conversation.
“You two have been having a very deep argument,” said Lady Louisa.
“I have been trying to convert him to optimism,” laughed Mrs. Fontaine. “It seems to be difficult. But I’ll do so in time. I’m a determined woman. I’ve a good mind to forbid you to leave Paris before your conversion.”
“The process would be pleasant, though the result would be problematical.”
“I’m not going to argue with you. I just want to make you see things for yourself.”
“I will submit gladly to your guidance,” said Quixtus.
She looked at the little watch on her bracelet, and her rising brought the little party to their feet.
“Shall we begin now? I’m going to walk up the Rue de la Paix and see the shops.”
Quixtus also consulted his watch. “I shall be honoured if you will let me walk up the Rue de la Paix with you. But then I must reluctantly leave you. I must meet my confrères of the Congress at the railway-station to go to Sèvres to see Monsieur Sardanel’s collection.”
“What has Sèvres china to do with anthropology?”
He smiled at her ignorance. Monsieur Sardanel had the famous collection of Mexican antiquities—terra-cotta rattles and masks and obsidian-edged swords.
Her long lashes swept shyly upwards. “I’m sure I could show you much more interesting things than those.”
It was a long time since a pretty and fascinating woman had evinced a desire for his company. He was a man, as well as a diabolically minded anthropologist. Yet there was a green avanturine quartz axe-head in the collection which he particularly lusted to behold. He stood irresolute, while Mrs. Fontaine turned with a laugh and took Lady Louisa aside. He caught Huckaby’s glance, in which he surprised a flicker of anxiety. Huckaby was wondering whether this was the right moment to speak. It seemed so. Yet the more he thought over the matter, the less was he inclined to cut the disgraceful figure in Quixtus’s eyes of the base betrayer of his supposed childhood’s flower-like friend. Here, however, was the wished-for opportunity, when Quixtus was evidently hesitating between primitive clay masks and a living woman’s face. He resolved to throw all the onus of the decision on Quixtus’s shoulders.