"Where have you seen them so much, Mr. Soames?"
"Oh, a little everywhere," I managed to reply, just as we were summoned to luncheon.
At table we talked of the pleasures of making "finds" in old European cities. I had evidently done a lot of it, for I could deal with it in general quite fluently. When they pinned me down with a question as to details I was obliged to hedge. I could talk of The Hague and Florence and Strasbourg and Madrid as backgrounds, but I could never picture myself to myself as walking in their streets.
That, however, was not evident to my companions, and as Mrs. Averill’s interests lay along the line of ceramic art I was able to bring out much in the way of connoisseurship which did not betray me. With Averill himself I scored a point; with Mildred Averill I scored many. With Mrs. Averill, beneath a seeming ennui that grew more languorous, I quickened curiosity to the fever-point.
"What a lot of things you must have, Mr. Soames."
My refuge being always in the negative, I said, casually: "Oh no! One doesn’t have to own things just because one admires them."
"But you say yourself that you’ve picked them up—"
As she had nearly caught me here I was obliged to wriggle out. "Oh, to give away—and that kind of thing."
Averill’s eyes were resting on me thoughtfully. "Sell?"
"No; I’ve never sold anything like that."
"But what’s the use," Mrs. Averill asked, "of caring about things when you can’t have them? I should hate it."
"Only that there’s nothing you can’t have."
"Do you hear that, Boyd?" I caught the impulse of the purring, velvety thing to vary the monotony of life by scratching. "Mr. Soames says there’s nothing I can’t have. Much he knows, doesn’t he?"
"There’s nothing you can’t have—within reason, dear."
"Ah, but I don’t want things within reason. I want them out of reason. I want to be like Mr. Soames—free—free—"
"You can’t be free and be a married woman."
"You can when you have a vocation, can’t you, Mr. Soames? I suppose Mr. Soames is a married man—and look at him." She hurried beyond this point, to add: "And look at Sydna, whom we heard the other afternoon! She’s a married woman and her husband lives in London. He lets her sing. He lets her travel. He leads his life and lets her ... Mr. Soames, what do you think?"