His round face
was innocent of smile or frown. Yet I knew he was taking what I had said
seriously, though for some reason or other it did not seem to give him
unqualified pleasure.
"Well, well!" he said at last. "You've spoken up like a man, anyway--and
like a man who knows what he wants. I can't tell how to answer you. I have
never lived on any one yet. Sponging's never been in my line. I have
enjoyed living on my wits. And Eve--she's a little that way, too. Makes me
kind of sorry I've let her go about with me so much. It's a wonderful
cloak of respectability you'd throw over us; but I'm wondering whether
it's large enough!"
"As my wife--" I began.
"Oh, yes! you'd gather her in all right to start with," he interrupted;
"but there are other things," he added, turning a little toward me and
looking me in the face. "Suppose she didn't turn out just as you thought!
She's a wild, high-spirited sort of creature--is Eve. She loves the music
and the rattle of life. I can't fancy her in one of those out-of-the-way,
God-forsaken little mudholes you call an English village, sitting in an
early-Victorian drawing-room all the afternoon, waiting for the vicar's
wife to come to tea, and taking a walk before dinner for entertainment,
with an umbrella and mackintosh.
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