"What I mean to say," continued Mr. Martin, when the boy had fled, "is this: If women must come kerboosting into a man's life, it's better for them to come while he's young and fool enough to enjoy it. There's a time for everything, as the Bible says, but don't let her put on you. The best of women will put on a man if he lets her, and that's bad for both."
That was the advice with which René Fourmy's second venture in cohabitation was blessed. As usually happens with advice, he was too deeply engrossed in present interests to apply what wisdom it contained to his own case. He drifted down the stream of bliss they had tapped, and, as generously as she, brought into their common stock as much kindness, consideration, and warmth, excitement and curiosity as they needed to take them from moment to moment. Only he brought no laughter, of which she supplied abundance. Both were out early and all day long, and both returned in the evening tired but eager for the new wonder of each other's company. Indeed it was wonderful, the easy sympathy they had for each other. They could be frank. She had no preconception of what love should be, and took all its delights simply as they came, and her simplicity fed and encouraged his. It was a novelty for him to live from day to day satisfied; a kind of Paradise, if Paradise is a place where the appetites are a little overfed, so that body and mind are brought to indolence.
Kilner had disappeared for a time, having made enough to be able to retire to his painting, and René had no other society than the chauffeurs in the shelters during the day and the familiars of Mitcham Mews in the evening. He became sluggishly content to drift. He was making good money, increased by Ann's earnings. If he ever thought of the old life in the North at all, it was with lazy contempt and indifference. His first attitude toward London was reversed. He had begun with all the northerner's contempt for the easy ways of the metropolis. He never read anything but the newspaper, and every evening would read aloud the "fooltong" in the _Star_. Ann took it for the betting. She put aside two shillings a week for "the horses," and he joined her in that pursuit. He did not so much enjoy her pleasures as her zest for them, and it became his object to keep that alive. Without that he was at moments aware of a sickening sensation that was truly horrible, making him gird at his surroundings, at certain tricks that Ann had, at habits, gestures, tones in her voice that were like his sister-in-law Elsie's. He saw the resemblance first on receiving a letter from his brother George: