th
voluptuous deliberation.

"Then I'm sure he's pleased."

"Paris, hateful Paris!"

"Oh, but that's abusive. A person who feels good all over should not say
that."

"You are right, Vere. But when are you not right? You ought always to
wear your hair down, mon enfant, and always to have just been bathing."

"And you ought always to have just been travelling."

"It is true that a dreadful past can be a blessing as well as a curse.
It is profoundly true. Why have I never realized that before?"

"If I am twelve and a half, I think you are about--about--"

"For the love of the sea make it under twenty, Vere."

"Nineteen, then."

"Were you going to make it under twenty?"

"Yes, I was."

"I don't believe you. Yes, I do, I do! You are an artist. You realize
that truth is a question of feeling, not a question of fact. You
penetrate beneath the gray hairs as the prosaic never do. This butter is
delicious! And to think that there have been moments when I have feared
butter, when I have kept an eye upon a corpulent future. Give me some
more, plenty more."

Vere stretched out her hand to the tea-table, but it shook. She drew it
back, and burst into a peal of laughter.

"What are you laughing at?" said Artois, with burlesque majesty.

"At you. What's the matter with you, Monsieur Emile? How can you be so
foolish?"

She lay back in her chair, with her hair streaming about her, and her
thin body quivered, as if the sense of fun within her were striving to
break through its prison walls.

"This," said Artois, "this is sheer impertinence. I venture to inquire
for butter, and--"

"To inquire! One, two, three, four--five pats of butter right in front
of you! And you inquire--!"

Artois suddenly sent out a loud roar to join her childish treble.

The tea had swept away his previous sensation of fatigue, even the happy
stolidity that had succeeded it for an instant. He felt full of life
and gayety, and a challenging mental activity. A similar challenging
activity, he thought, shone in the eyes of the girl opposite to him.

"Thank God I can still be foolish!" he exclaimed. "And thank God that
there are people in the world devoid of humor. My German friend was
without humor. Only that fact enabled me to endure his prodigious
collection of ailments. But for the heat I might even have revelled in
them. He was asthmatic, without humor; dyspeptic, without humor. He had
a bad cold in the head, without humor, and got up i