A singular expression crossed the young lady's face, an imperious desire to ask, to search out the ultimate of the matter. But it was momentary. Spoilt child of fortune, she was too unaccustomed to vital drama to know how to deal with it. It staggered, it also slightly disgusted her. She could not rise to it. So conventionality proved stronger than even this very legitimate curiosity. Virginia remained true to her somewhat artificial traditions, to her own canons of good taste and self-respect, to that singular clause of the social creed which declares the thing unsaid also non-existent. Virginia appeared, in a way, admirable just then, yet she gave the measure of her nature. It was not great. She turned aside, with a movement of well-defined and lofty superiority. "Are you aware that you become very indelicate?" she asked. "Most men are indelicate at times, unfortunately." "But not over here," she said. "American women do not permit that. You must remember whom you have married."--She waited a little. "The English standards are different, I presume," she added, not without a touch of sarcasm. "I begin to think they are," Laurence answered.--He was paying, paying abominably; yet there was a sensible relief in so doing.--"They are based on the logic of fact," he continued. "And fact is more often indelicate than not. It has never yet, you see, learned to be a respecter of persons." There was a pause, in which once again the fiddlings of the grasshoppers and soothing lap of the water became audible. "Do you still propose to go to England?" Laurence nodded. "Yes," he said. "Then"--began Virginia; but the young man held up his hand, partly in warning, partly demanding a cessation of hostilities. His thought had taken a new departure in regard to his wife. Somehow she had destroyed her own legend. She was more slight and shallow a creature than he had supposed, and he would never really stand in awe of her again. His smile was sad yet wholly friendly. "Then--in a couple of weeks or so--I shall come back and fetch you," he declared. "And then, like wise and politic human beings, we will eschew controversy, each giving the other as much room as possible. I fancy you'll find we shall shake down pretty easily, and rub along like most other married people.--Meanwhile what's becoming of poor, neglected Horace Greener? Go and amuse both yourself and him, my dear. If you're not in before I start--well--for the moment, _addio_." XXV