Norman, without seeming to do so, noted the rest of the Burroughs party. At Josephine's right sat a handsome young foreigner, and it took small experience of the world to discover that he was paying court to her, and that she was pleased and flattered. Norman asked the waiter who he was, and learned that he came from the waiter's own province of France, was the Duc de Valdome. At first glance Norman had thought him distinguished. Afterward he discriminated. There are several kinds or degrees of distinction. There is distinction of race, of class, of family, of dress, of person.
As Frenchman, as aristocrat, as a scion of the ancient family of Valdome, as a specimen of tailoring and valeting, Miss Burroughs's young man was distinguished.
But in his own proper person he was rather insignificant.
The others at the table were Americans. Following Miss Burroughs's cue, they sought an opportunity to speak friendlily to Norman--and he gave it them. His acknowledgment of those effusive salutations was polite but restrained.
"They are friends of yours?" said Dorothy.
"They were," said he. "And they may be again--when they are friends of OURS."
"I'm not very good at ****** friends," she warned him. "I don't like many people." This time her unconscious and profound egotism pleased him. Evidently it did not occur to her that she should be eager to be friends with those people on any terms, that the only question was whether they would receive her.
She asked: "Why was Miss--Miss Burroughs so friendly?"
"Why shouldn't she be?"
"But I thought you threw her over."
He winced at this crude way of putting it. "On the contrary, she threw me over."
Dorothy laughed incredulously. "I know better.
Mr. Tetlow told me."
"She threw me over," repeated he coldly. "Tetlow was repeating malicious and ignorant gossip."
Dorothy laughed again--it was her second glass of champagne. "You say that because it's the honorable thing to say. But I know."
"I say it because it's true," said he.
He spoke quietly, but if she had drunk many more than two glasses of an unaccustomed and heady liquor she would have felt his intonation. She paled and shrank and her slim white fingers fluttered nervously at the collar of her dress. "I was only joking," she murmured.
He laughed good-naturedly. "Don't look as if I had given you a whipping," said he. "Surely you're not afraid of me."
She glanced shyly at him, a smile dancing in her eyes and upon her lips. "Yes," she said. And after a pause she added: "I didn't used to be. But that was because I didn't know you--or much of anything."
The smile irradiated her whole face. "You used to be afraid of me. But you aren't, any more."
"No," said he, looking straight at her. "No, I'm not."
"I always told you you were mistaken in what you thought of me. I really don't amount to much. A man as serious and as important as you are couldn't--couldn't care about me."
"It's true you don't amount to much, as yet," said he. "And if you never do amount to much, you'd be no less than most women and most men. But I've an idea --at times--that you COULD amount to something."
He saw that he had wounded her vanity, that her protestations of humility were precisely what he had suspected. He laughed at her: "I see you thought I'd contradict you. But I can't afford to be so amiable now. And the first thing you've got to get rid of is the part of your vanity that prevents you from growing.
Vanity of belief in one's possibilities is fine. No one gets anywhere without it. But vanity of belief in one's present perfection--no one but a god could afford that luxury."
Observing her closely he was amused--and pleased --to note that she was struggling to compose herself to endure his candors as a necessary part of the duties and obligations she had taken on herself when she gave up and returned to him.
"What YOU thought of ME used to be the important thing in our relations," he went on, in his way of raillery that took all or nearly all the sting out of what he said, but none of its strength. "Now, the important thing is what I think of you. You are much younger than I, especially in experience. You are going to school to life with me as teacher. You'll dislike the teacher for the severity of the school. That isn't just, but it's natural--perhaps inevitable. And please--my dear--when you are bitterest over what YOU have to put up with from ME--don't forget what _I_ have to put up with from YOU."
