The Incomplete Amorist

"I am tired," he said. "I have been in Spain. And in Italy. And in Algiers."

"Very fatiguing countries, I understand. And what is your best news?"

He stood on the hearth-rug, looking down at her.

"Betty Desmond's married," he said.

"Yes," she answered, "to that nice boy Temple, too. I saw it in the paper. Dreadful isn't it? Here to-day and gone to-morrow!"

"I'll tell you why she married him," said Vernon, letting himself down into a chair, "if you'd like me to. At least I'll tell you why she didn't marry me. But perhaps the subject has ceased to interest you?"

"Not at all," she answered with extreme politeness.

So he told her.

"Yes, I suppose it would be like that. It must have annoyed you very much. It's left marks on your face, Eustace. You look tired to death."

"That sort of thing does leave marks."

"That girl taught you something, Eustace; something that's stuck."

"It is not impossible, I suppose," he said and then very carelessly, as one leading the talk to lighter things, he added: "I suppose you wouldn't care to marry me?"

"Candidly," she answered, calling all her powers of deception to her aid, "candidly, I don't think I should."

"I knew it," said Vernon, smiling; "my heart told me so."

"She," said Lady St. Craye, "was frightened away from her life's happiness, as they call it, by seeing you rather near to a pink silk model. I suppose you think I shouldn't mind such things?"

"You forget," said Vernon demurely. "Such things never happen after one is married."

"No," she said, "of course they don't. I forgot that."

"You might as well marry me," he said, and the look of youth had come back suddenly, as it's way was, to his face.

"I might very much better not."

They looked at each other steadily. She saw in his eyes a little of what it was that Betty had taught him.

She never knew what he saw in hers, for all in a moment he was kneeling beside her; his arm was across the back of her chair, his head was on her shoulder and his face was laid against her neck, as the face of a child, tired with a long play-day, is laid against the neck of its mother.