“There is something else. One might be proud.”
“There you are again!” Bernard exclaimed. “You won’t even let me praise your modesty.”
“I would rather you should rebuke my pride.”
“That is so humble a speech that it leaves no room for rebuke.”
“Men are singularly base,” she declared presently, with a little smile. “They don’t care in the least to say things that might help a person. They only care to say things that may seem effective and agreeable.”
“I see: you think that to say agreeable things is a great misdemeanor.”
“It comes from their vanity,” Miss Vivian went on, as if she had not heard him. “They wish to appear agreeable and get credit for cleverness and tendresse, no matter how silly it would be for another person to believe them.”
Bernard was a good deal amused, and a little nettled.
“Women, then,” he said, “have rather a fondness for producing a bad impression--they like to appear disagreeable?”
His companion bent her eyes upon her fan for a moment as she opened and closed it.
“They are capable of resigning themselves to it--for a purpose.”
“I don’t know that I mean for a purpose,” said Miss Vivian; “but for a necessity.”
“Necessities usually are odious. But women meet them. Men evade them and shirk them.”
“I contest your proposition. Women are themselves necessities; but they are not odious ones!” And Bernard added, in a moment, “One could n’t evade them, if they were!”
“I object to being called a necessity,” said Angela Vivian. “It diminishes one’s merit.”
“The charm of life is very great,” Bernard went on, looking up at the dusky hills and the summer stars, seen through a sort of mist of music and talk, and of powdery light projected from the softly lurid windows of the gaming-rooms. “The charm of life is extreme. I am unacquainted with odious necessities. I object to nothing!”
Angela Vivian looked about her as he had done--looked perhaps a moment longer at the summer stars; and if she had not already proved herself a young lady of a contradictory turn, it might have been supposed she was just then tacitly admitting the charm of life to be considerable.
“Do you suppose Miss Evers often resigns herself to being disagreeable--for a purpose?” asked Longueville, who had glanced at Captain Lovelock’s companion again.