“To discover what’s in your mind,” she said, a little impatiently.
“If you don’t know that yet!” I exclaimed under my breath.
“No, not in your mind. Can any one ever tell what is in a man’s mind? But I see you won’t tell.”
“What’s the good? You have written to her before, I understand. Do you think of continuing the correspondence?”
“Who knows?” she said in a profound tone. “She is the only woman that ever wrote to me. I returned her three letters to her with my last answer, explaining humbly that I preferred her to burn them herself. And I thought that would be the end of it. But an occasion may still arise.”
“Oh, if an occasion arises,” I said, trying to control my rage, “you may be able to begin your letter by the words ‘Chere Maman.’”
The cigarette box, which she had taken up without removing her eyes from me, flew out of her hand and opening in mid-air scattered cigarettes for quite a surprising distance all over the room. I got up at once and wandered off picking them up industriously. Dona Rita’s voice behind me said indifferently:
“Don’t trouble, I will ring for Rose.”
“No need,” I growled, without turning my head, “I can find my hat in the hall by myself, after I’ve finished picking up . . . ”
“Bear!”
I returned with the box and placed it on the divan near her. She sat cross-legged, leaning back on her arms, in the blue shimmer of her embroidered robe and with the tawny halo of her unruly hair about her face which she raised to mine with an air of resignation.
“George, my friend,” she said, “we have no manners.”
“You would never have made a career at court, Dona Rita,” I observed. “You are too impulsive.”
“This is not bad manners, that’s sheer insolence. This has happened to you before. If it happens again, as I can’t be expected to wrestle with a savage and desperate smuggler single-handed, I will go upstairs and lock myself in my room till you leave the house. Why did you say this to me?”
“Oh, just for nothing, out of a full heart.”
“If your heart is full of things like that, then my dear friend, you had better take it out and give it to the crows. No! you said that for the pleasure of appearing terrible. And you see you are not terrible at all, you are rather amusing,chanel classic bags. Go on, continue to be amusing. Tell me something of what you heard from the lips of that aristocratic old lady who thinks that all men are equal and entitled to the pursuit of happiness.”
“I hardly remember now. I heard something about the unworthiness of certain white geese out of stuffy drawing-rooms. It sounds mad, but the lady knows exactly what she wants. I also heard your praises sung. I sat there like a fool not knowing what to say.”
“Why? You might have joined in the singing.”
“I didn’t feel in the humour, because, don’t you see,cheap moncler jackets, I had been incidentally given to understand that I was an insignificant and superfluous person who had better get out of the way of serious people.”
“Ah,cheap chanel bags, par example!”
“In a sense, you know, it was flattering; but for the moment it made me feel as if I had been offered a pot of mustard to sniff.”
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