Part 4 (1/2)
Her smile broadened into a laugh. This time at herself--at his description of her; she asked:
”And those--shall I call them unusual?--characteristics in a woman interest you?”
”Amazingly!”
”Why?”
She put the question with a little nervousness, bred of that eagerness of his.
”Because--well, let me say by sheer force of contrast. In those respects, Heaven be thanked, you are not as other women.”
The amused look had not left her face. It lingered in the upward curve of the corners of her eyes.
”So you prefer eccentric women, then?”
She could not resist just a trace of mischief in the tone of her query.
He answered:
”Heaven forefend! I see nothing eccentric in the attributes I have allotted to you. They are refres.h.i.+ngly good to a thirsty soul.”
The amus.e.m.e.nt and mischief tones left her voice. She asked demurely:
”Are you thirsty?”
”Parched! I confess I am. I have just escaped from the dead level of dry conventionality. That arid desert: the Sahara of Society. Its womenkind are my abomination.”
She looked a little annoyed. As if not appreciating his description.
”I have heard it rumoured, Mr. Masters, that you fly from London to escape Society's attentions.”
”And for once the many-tongued is not a lying jade. I suppose all of us, every man and woman, are more or less eccentric.”
”Put it that we, most of us, have bees in our bonnets.”
”Precisely. The buzzing of my particular insect is the artificial life of modern Society. I just loathe it; never go out for that reason. Fly from London? Yes; I own up; I do. As fast as an express can wing me. Fly to escape the inanities with which the cup of social life is overflowing.”
”b.a.l.l.s, parties----”
”And things of that sort are my pet horrors.”
She smiled at the expression of his disgust; his manner of expressing it; said:
”I seem to be shaking a red rag at a bull!”
”If,” he continued, ”Society is the product of civilization I am an untutored savage. Not an ungrateful one, mark you, but one thankful for his savagery. Afternoon teas, flower shows, and the hundred and one idiotic things which go to make up the ordinary every-day life in London ought to be abolished by a drastic Act of Parliament.”
Her smile merged into laughter. She had gauged his capacity for exaggeration by this time. The beginning of her understanding of him was setting in. Her laugh over, she said:
”I think you are very drastic.”