"'Honor, anger, valor, fire,'" Celeste repeated slowly. "Yes, that is Nora." A bitter little smile moved her lips as she recalled the happenings of the last two days. But no; he must find out for himself; he must meet the hurt from Nora, not from her. "How long, Abbott, have you known your friend Mr. Courtlandt?"
"Boys together," playing a light tattoo with his mahl-stick.
"Oceans of money; throws it away, but not fast enough to get rid of it."
"He is what you say in English ... wild?"
"Well," with mock gravity, "I shouldn't like to be the tiger that crossed his path. Wild; that's the word for it."
"You are laughing. Ah, I know! I should say dissipated."
"Courtlandt? Come, now, Celeste; does he look dissipated?"
"He drinks when he chooses, he flirts with a pretty woman when he chooses, he smokes the finest tobacco there is when he chooses; and he gives them all up when he chooses. He is like the seasons; he comes and goes, and nobody can change his habits."
"Why, Courtlandt hasn't any heart. It's a mechanical device to keep his blood in circulation; that's all. I am the most intimate friend he has, and yet I know no more than you how he lives and where he goes."
She let her hand fall from his shoulder. She was glad that he did not know.
A woman was coming serenely down the path from the wooded promontory, a woman undeniably handsome in a cedar-tinted linen dress, exquisitely fashioned, with a touch of vivid scarlet on her hat and a most tantalizing flash of scarlet ankle. It was Flora Desimone, fresh from her morning bath and a substantial breakfast. The errand that had brought her from Aix-les-Bains was confessedly a merciful one. But she possessed the dramatist's instinct to prolong a situation. Thus, to make her act of mercy seem infinitely larger than it was, she was determined first to cast the Apple of Discord into this charming corner of Eden. The Apple of Discord, as every man knows, is the only thing a woman can throw with any accuracy.
The artist snatched up his brushes, and ruined the painting forthwith, for all time. The foreground was, in his opinion, beyond redemption; so, with a savage humor, he rapidly limned in a score of impossible trees, turned midday into sunset, with a riot of colors which would have made the Chinese New-year in Canton a drab and sober event in comparison. He hated Flora Desimone, as all Nora's adherents most properly did, but with a hatred wholly reflective and adapted to Nora's moods.