b him of his
pleasure?

"I don't understand you, Opal," she was saying. (Of course she didn't,
thought the Boy--how could she?) "I am sure that I live. And yet I have
never felt that way--thank goodness! It's vulgar to feel too deeply,
Mamma used to say, and as I have grown older, I can see that she was
right. The best people never show any excess of emotion. That is for
tragedy queens, operatic stars, and--the women we do not talk about!
Ladies cultivate repose!"

("Repose!--_mon Dieu!_" thought Paul, behind the hedge. He wished that
she would!)

"And yet, Alice, you are--married!"

"Married?--of course!--why not?" and the eavesdropper fancied he could
see the wide-open gaze of well-bred English surprise that accompanied
the words. "One has to marry, of course. That is what we are created
for. But one doesn't make a fuss about it. It's only a custom--a
ceremony--and doesn't change existence much for most women, if they
choose sensibly. Of course there is always the chance of a
_mesalliance_! A woman has to risk that."

"And you don't--love?"

The Boy was struck by a note that was almost horror in the opaline voice
so near him.

"Love? Why, Opal, of course we do! It's easy to love, you know, when a
man is decent and half-way good to one. I am sure I think a great deal
of Algernon; but I dare say I should have thought as much of any other
man I had happened to marry. That is a wife's duty!"

"_Duty!_--and you call that love?" The horror in the tones had now
changed to scorn.

"You have strange ideas of life, Opal. I should be afraid to indulge
them if I were you--really I should! You have lived so much in books
that you seem to have a very garbled idea of the world. Fiction is apt
to be much of a fairy tale, a crazy exaggeration of what living really
consists of!"

"_Afraid?_ Why should I be afraid? I am an American girl, remember, and
Americans are afraid of nothing--nothing! Come, cousin, tell to me, if
you can, why I should be afraid."

"Oh, I don't know! really I don't!" There was a troubled, perplexed note
in the English voice now. "Such notions are apt to get girls into
trouble, and lead them to some unhappy fate. Too much 'life'--as you
call it--must mean suffering, and sorrow, and many tears--and maybe,
_sin_!"

There was a shocked note in the voice of the young English matron as
she added the last word, and her voice sank to a whisper. But Paul
Zalenska heard, and smiled.

"Suffering, and sor