"Just walk about near the wine shop, Burton, and try to find out by
every clue your not unintelligent old pate can invent, where Miss Sharp
lives, and what is happening? Then go to the Hotel de Courville and chat
with the concierge--or whatever you think best--I simply can't stand
hearing nothing!"
Burton pulled in his lips.
"Very good, Sir Nicholas."
I tried to correct my book in the afternoon. I really am trying to do
the things I feel she thinks would improve my character--But I am one
gnawing ache for news--Underneath is the fear that some complication may
occur which will prevent her returning to me. I find myself listening to
every footstep in the passage in case it might be a telegram, so of
course quite a number of messages and things were bound to come from
utterly uninteresting sources, to fill me with hope and then disappoint
me--It is always like that. I really was wild on Friday afternoon, and
if George Harcourt had not turned up--he is at the Trianon Palace now
with the Supreme War Council--I don't know what I should have done with
myself. Lots of those fellows would come and dine with me if I wanted
them--some are even old pals--but I am out of tune with my kind.
George was very amusing.
"My dear boy," he said, "Violetta is upsetting all my calculations--she
has refused everything I have offered her--But I fear she is beginning
to show me too much devotion!"
This seemed a great calamity to him.
"It is terribly dangerous that, Nicholas!--because you know, my dear
boy, when a woman shows absolute devotion, a man is irresistibly
impelled to offer her a back seat--it is when she appeals to his senses,
shows him caprice, and remains an insecure possession, that he will
offer her the place his mother held of highest honour."
"George, you impossible cynic!"
"Not at all--I am merely a student of human instincts and
characteristics--Half a cynic is a poor creature--A complete one has
almost reached the mercy and tolerance of Christ."
This was quite a new view of the subject--!
He went on--.
"You see, when men philosophize about women, they are generally unjust,
taking the subject from the standpoint that whatever frailties they
have, the male is at all events exempt from them. Now that is
nonsense--Neither sex is exempt--and neither sex as a rule will
contemplate or admit its failings.--For instance, the sense of abstract
truth in the noblest woman never prevents her lying for her lover or
her child, yet she thinks herself quite honest--In the noblest man the
sense is so strong that it enables him to make only the one exception,
that of invariably lying to the woman!"