He told himself that this peerless beauty might soon become a bore; and he thought how much peerless loveliness there must have been in the Royal Preacher's palace at the very time he was writing Ecclesiastes: but all the same he found that Mrs. Bellenden's conversation--empty-headed as it might be--gave a gusto to his days and nights during that Goodwood week. Their trivial talk was pleasant from its very foolishness. It was conversation without disturbing thought. There were no flashlights of memory to bring sudden sadness. A good deal of their talk was sheer nonsense--of no more value than the dialogue in a musical comedy--but it was a relief to talk nonsense, to laugh at bad puns, and to ridicule the serious side of life. Claude gave himself up to the mood of the moment, and was at his best: the irresponsible trifler, the mocker at solemn things, who had once been the desire of every hostess; the light, airy jester, to keep the table in a roar, the insidious flirt and flatterer, to amuse women after dinner. People told each other that Rutherford was quite in his old form. He had become horribly _blasé_ and _distrait_ of late, as if all the sparkle had gone out of him under the weight of his wife's gold. "I don't believe a millionaire can be happy," said the poet. "Rutherford has been deteriorating ever since his marriage. He rushes about doing things; racing, ballooning, flying, acting, hunting, shooting; perpetual motion without gaiety. He was twice the man when he was loafing about the world on fifteen hundred a year." "He is one of those men whom marriage always spoils," replied the painter. "A chameleon soul that ought never to have worn fetters. To chain such a creature to a wife is as bad as caging a skylark. If he can't soar, he can't sing." "I take it he will soon be out of the cage. He has done two years of the married lover's business, and we shall see him presently as the emancipated husband." CHAPTER XXVI Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford were to winter in Rome, but there was the autumn still to be disposed of. Neither of them wanted Marienbad. They knew the place inside out, and hated it; and after wasting half an hour at the breakfast-table turning over a Continental Bradshaw, they had only arrived more certainly at the conviction that they were tired of everywhere.