CHAPTER XXIV.

AN UNEXPECTED CONFESSION.

She met Quintard next at one of Mrs. Dykman’s _musicales_. That fashionable lady was fond of entertaining, and Hermia was delighted to pay the bills. If it pleased Mrs. Dykman to have her entertainments in her own house rather than in the mansion on Second Avenue, she should be gratified, and Winston never betrayed family secrets.

People were very glad to go to Mrs. Dykman’s house. She never had any surprises for them, but they always went away feeling that her evening had been one of the successes of the season. In her palmier days she had done much entertaining, and seen a great deal of the world. She had been a beauty in her youth, and was still so handsome that people forgot to insult her by calling her “well preserved.” If her hair had turned gray, the world never found it out; she wore a dark-brown wig which no one but her maid had ever seen elsewhere than on her head; and her unfathomable gray eyes had not a wrinkle about them. She still carried her head with the air of one who has had much incense offered her, and, although her repose amounted to monotony, it was very impressive. She had grown stout, but every curve of her gowns, every arrangement of draperies, lied as gracefully and conclusively as a diplomatist. She was one of the few women upon whom Quintard ever called, and he was a great pet of hers.

“She may not be an intellectual woman,” he said to Hermia, on this night of the _musicale_, “but she has learned enough in her life to make up for it. I have seldom met a more interesting woman. If she were twenty years younger, I’d ask her to marry and knock about the world with me.”

“Yes? I suppose you find the intellectual a good deal of a bore, do you not?”

“Was that a shot? By itself, emphatically yes—a hideous bore. When combined with one or two other things, most eagerly to be welcomed.”

“What other things?”

“Oh, womanliness and _savoir_—but, primarily, passion.”

“Do you know that you are very frank?” exclaimed Hermia.

“I beg your pardon,” humbly. “I have a bad habit of saying what I think, and, besides, I feel a doubly strong impulse to be frank with you. I abominate girls as a rule; I never talk to them. But I have rather a feeling of good comradeship with you. It always seems as if you _understood_, and it never occurs to me that I can make a mistake with you. You are quite unlike other girls. You have naturally a broad mind. Do not deliberately contract it.”

“No,” said Hermia, quite mollified, “I have no desire to; and, for some peculiar reason, what you say may startle but it never offends. You have a way of carrying things off.”

After the music and supper were over, Hermia sat with him awhile up-stairs in her aunt’s boudoir.

“Have you idled away your whole life?” she asked. “Do you never intend to _do_ anything?”

“Do you think it is doing nothing to spend five years in the study of Europe?”

“But what are you going to _do_ with it all? Just keep it in your head?”

“What would you have me do with it? Put it in a book and inflict it on the world?”

“Yes. Give yourself some definite object in life. I have no respect for people who just drift along—who have no ambition nor aim.”

“Well, I will tell you something if you will promise not to betray me,” he said, quickly: “I am writing a book.”

“No?” exclaimed Hermia. “Actually? Tell me about it. Is it a novel? a book of travels?”

“Neither. It is a series of lives of certain knights of Norman days about whom there are countless fragmentary legends, but nothing has ever been written. I am making a humble endeavor to reproduce these legends in the style and vernacular of the day and in blank verse. Imagine a band of old knights, broken-down warriors, hunted to the death, and hiding in a ruined castle. To while away the time they relate their youthful deeds of love and war. Do you like the idea?”

Hermia leaned forward with her eyes expanded to twice their natural size. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that you care for the past—that its romance appeals to you?”

Quintard threw himself back in his chair and raised his eyebrows a little. “I have gone so far, I may as well confess the whole thing,” he said. “I would have lived in the feudal ages if I could. Love and war! That is all man was made for. Everything he has acquired since is artificial and in the way. He has lost the faculty of enjoying life since he has imagined he must have so much to enjoy it with. Let a man live for two passions, and he is happy. Let him have twenty ways of amusing himself, and he lowers his capacity for enjoying any one in the endeavor to patronize them all.”

Hermia remembered her experience with Cryder. He had talked very beautifully of the past—once. Life was making her skeptical. “Have you written any of your book?” she asked.

“Yes, it is nearly done.”

“Would you let me see it? Or is that asking too much? But—that period of history particularly interests me. I used to live in it.”

“Did you? I should be very glad to have you read my effusions; but wading through manuscript is a frightful bore.”

“I have waded through a good deal,” said Hermia, briefly. “Bring it to-morrow night. No,”—she had suddenly recollected that the next was Cryder’s evening. “Bring it the next night—no—the next. Will that do?”

“Yes,” said Quintard. “I will afflict you, with great pleasure, if you will let me.”

When they went down-stairs, Mrs. Dykman wrapped Hermia’s furs more closely about her. “I hope, my dear,” she murmured, “you do not mind that the whole house is talking about you. Do you know that Mr. Quintard is the only man whom you have condescended to notice during the entire evening?”

“No?” said Hermia. “I had not thought about it. No, I don’t mind. A woman is not happy until she is talked about—just a little, you know. When her position is secure, it makes her so picturesque—quite individual.”

“You will be engaged before the week is over. You will be accused of having deserted Mr. Cryder, and entered upon a more desperate flirtation yet. The ultra caustic will remember Grettan Quintard’s reputation.”

“You can deny the engagement,” said Hermia.

* * * * *