"Perhaps," said Damier, smiling as he leaned back in his chair, arms folded and knees crossed, listening to her--"perhaps you underestimate her success, or overestimate the Luciferian splendor of your own nature."
"I don't think it is at all splendid," said Claire, composedly; "some wickedness is, I grant you; but do I strike you as affecting that kind?"
"Or, indeed, as affecting anything either picturesque or desirable?" she pursued.
Again Damier had to own that she affected no such thing.
"Ah, that is well. I should not like you to misinterpret me," said Claire. "I make no poses." And after a slight pause in which he wondered anew over her, she added: "I merely like enjoyment better than anything else in the world."
"Yours, you know, is a very old philosophy--a universe of will and enjoyment; but one must have a great deal of the former to attain the latter in a world of so many clashing aims," said Damier.
"And not the highest type of will. The world, so seen, is a terrible one."
"Do you think so?" Her look, from the sky, drifted lazily down to him.
"No; I think it wonderful, enthralling, if one attains one's aims; it is all beautiful, even the suffering--if one avoids suffering one's self."
While safe beneath the roof, To hear with drowsy ear the plash of rain."
"_Mais_,"--Claire had a tolerant smile for his naïveté,--"by staying under the roof, laughing round the fire. Mamma, you see, would be darting out continually into the storm."
"And crowding us uncomfortably round the fire, getting the rest of us wet!" smiled Claire. "For a case in point--don't you find Sophie a bore? She was going to commit suicide when Mamma, through something Miss Vibert said, found her. Yes, I assure you, the charcoal was lit--her last sous spent on it. And really, do you know, I think it would have been a wise thing. Don't be too much horrified at my heartlessness. I mean that Sophie will never enjoy herself; nothing in this world will ever satisfy her. When she has enough to eat she can realize more clearly her higher wants. And--I don't want to seem more ungenerous than I am, but, as a result, we have less to eat ourselves. Don't look so stony; I am not really _un mauvais coeur_. I would willingly dot Sophie, buy her the best husband procurable if I had the money; but husbands and houses and money wouldn't make Sophie comfortable, and I don't really see that much is gained by making two people less so in order to insure the survival of one unfit little Pole."