Prince Charlie Part 4

Her smile broadened into a laugh. This time at herself--at his description of her; she asked:

"And those--shall I call them unusual?--characteristics in a woman interest you?"

"Amazingly!"

"Why?"

She put the question with a little nervousness, bred of that eagerness of his.

"Because--well, let me say by sheer force of contrast. In those respects, Heaven be thanked, you are not as other women."

The amused look had not left her face. It lingered in the upward curve of the corners of her eyes.

"So you prefer eccentric women, then?"

She could not resist just a trace of mischief in the tone of her query.

He answered:

"Heaven forefend! I see nothing eccentric in the attributes I have allotted to you. They are refres.h.i.+ngly good to a thirsty soul."

The amus.e.m.e.nt and mischief tones left her voice. She asked demurely:

"Are you thirsty?"

"Parched! I confess I am. I have just escaped from the dead level of dry conventionality. That arid desert: the Sahara of Society. Its womenkind are my abomination."

She looked a little annoyed. As if not appreciating his description.

"I have heard it rumoured, Mr. Masters, that you fly from London to escape Society's attentions."

"And for once the many-tongued is not a lying jade. I suppose all of us, every man and woman, are more or less eccentric."

"Put it that we, most of us, have bees in our bonnets."

"Precisely. The buzzing of my particular insect is the artificial life of modern Society. I just loathe it; never go out for that reason. Fly from London? Yes; I own up; I do. As fast as an express can wing me. Fly to escape the inanities with which the cup of social life is overflowing."

"b.a.l.l.s, parties----"

"And things of that sort are my pet horrors."

She smiled at the expression of his disgust; his manner of expressing it; said:

"I seem to be shaking a red rag at a bull!"

"If," he continued, "Society is the product of civilization I am an untutored savage. Not an ungrateful one, mark you, but one thankful for his savagery. Afternoon teas, flower shows, and the hundred and one idiotic things which go to make up the ordinary every-day life in London ought to be abolished by a drastic Act of Parliament."

Her smile merged into laughter. She had gauged his capacity for exaggeration by this time. The beginning of her understanding of him was setting in. Her laugh over, she said:

"I think you are very drastic."

"I hope not!"

"Why?"

"Because if you think so, I have been mistaken. I have formed a wrong estimate of your character if you care for those things."

"And supposing I did? Would it be, think you--unwomanly?"

"As the world wags? No. On the contrary. The absolute quintessence of womanliness in nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a possible thousand."

"But----"

"Ah! that is it!"

"But if I did care for all and singular the things you object to so much?"

"I should be sorry--really sorry--that I had spoken as I have done."

"Why?"

"Because it would, must, savour of impertinence. We, each of us, have a right to our own opinions. I should just hate to think that I have been forcing mine on any one; it would be a painful thing. Opinions, like boots, should fit the wearer--neither too narrow nor too wide, and possibly an allowance for stretching a point. To force an opinion would be a modernized version of the iron boot the torturers used to handle in the Inquisition days."

"But you expressed yourself"--she smiled at the recollection of it--"very strongly just now."

"Because I thought we were more or less on the same plane; were thinking in common. I hoped so."

"Tell me, will you, why you thought me different from other women: thought as you did of me?"

"Oh, come! Isn't that now--don't you think that rather hard on me?"

"Why?"

"To put such a question as that. Calling on me to tell you why I think."

"Why not?"

"Think! If I could bring myself to lie you would not like it. Yet, supposing I said something to offend you?"

"Why should you?"

"Because of my ignorance. I would not for worlds--knowingly. You would know that I should not mean to."

"Very well, then. Why should I take offence where none is intended?"

He hesitated a moment. Plainly saw the danger-signal flying; then he spoke:

"You are a woman."

She tossed her head at that. There was no mistaking the tone in which she said: