‘Every sort of agreeable experience, my dear child. The disgusting is for the great masters. Mine is pocket art--a branch that the critics discreetly label as decadent, although lucrative. Besides,’ said Gaston, ‘I have sold my soul to the dealers. And the dealers have sold theirs, if they have any, to a puerility-loving public. An honest manufacturer of paper weights and clock stands needs nothing but prettiness,--I won’t say beauty,--the prettiness of a Parisian, masquerading as a fisher-girl!’ ‘Or of Parisian children dancing at an afternoon ball. Mrs. Thorne told me about your meeting with some old student acquaintance, and how his daughters led you away captive.’ ‘Small tyrants! I had to dance four dances with each of them, and then be told I was “un Monsieur très paresseux” for my reward. And so Mrs. Thorne and you are becoming better friends,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, looking hard through the veil of twilight at his wife’s reluctant face. ‘She is a dear good soul, is she not? So bright, so spontaneous! Really, I think that is Mrs. Thorne’s crowning charm--her spontaneity.’ ‘I am no friend of hers.’ Dinah’s voice had become cold. ‘I did not like Mrs. Thorne at first. I dislike her now.’ ‘Impossible, Dinah--impossible. A woman with your face should dislike no created thing.’ ‘I dislike her because her words sting even when they sound softest, because she will never look at one straight. I dislike her,’ said Dinah, feeling her cheeks burn with shame and indignation, ‘because she calls you “Gaston” when she speaks of you.’ At this terrible climax Mr. Arbuthnot laughed, so heartily that the quiet undulating sandhills echoed again. Far ahead Mrs. Linda might perhaps have caught the ring of his voice, have marvelled what subject people who had been married four mortal years could find to laugh about. ‘This is a black accusation. Happily, whatever her sins in my absence, Mrs. Thorne does not call me “Gaston” to my face.’ Dinah was silent. Gaston’s assurances had never carried the same weight with her since Saturday’s rose-show, the occasion when she learned of midnight adjournments to Dr. Thorne’s house, and of the singing of French songs after a certain mess dinner. Her own conscience was rigid. To suppress a truth was, according to Dinah’s code, precisely the same as to utter an untruth. She allowed no margin for her husband’s offhand histories--as a woman of larger mind would possibly have done. She could not see that carelessness, a quick imagination, and an intense love of peace, were factors sufficiently strong to account for any little inconsistencies that might now and again creep into Gaston Arbuthnot’s domestic confidences. ‘Of that I cannot judge. I suppose I ought not to care what Mrs. Thorne does or says in _my_ absence.’ ‘Of course you ought not. The speech is worthy of your thorough common-sense, Dinah.’ ‘But Mrs. Thorne calls you “Gaston” to me, and I think it a very wretched, unkind thing to do. I think it mean.’