ell what you said. You don't have to go
all over it again. I'm not deaf. If you would only not be so
excitable----"

He jumped to his feet. "I'm excitable, I know, Barbe. I confess it.
Everybody knows it. What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm not
excited _now_."

She laughed, a little mocking laugh, and started once more to pace up
and down. "Oh, very well! You're not excited now. Then that's
understood. You never are excited. You're as calm as a mountain." She
paused again, though at a distance. "_Now?_ What is it you're going to
do? That's what you've come to ask me, isn't it? Are you going to run
after her? Are you going to let her go? Are you going to divorce her,
if she gives you the opportunity? If you divorce her are you going
to----?"

"But, Barbe, I can't decide all these questions now. What I want to do
is to _find_ her."

"Well, I haven't got her here? Why don't you go after her? Why don't
you apply to the police? Why don't you----?"

"Yes, but that's just what I want to discuss with you. I don't _like_
applying to the police. If I do it'll get into the papers, and the
whole thing become so odious and vulgar----"

"And it's such an exquisite idyll now!"

He threw back his head. "_She's_ an exquisite idyll--in her way."

"There! That's what I wanted to hear you say! I've thought you were in
love with her----"

He remembered the penciled lines in Hans Andersen. "If I have been,
it's as you may be in love with an innocent little child----"

She laughed again, wildly, almost hysterically. "Oh, Rash, don't try
to get that sort of thing off on me. I know how men love innocent
little children. You can see the way they do it any night you choose
to hang round the stage-door of a theatre where the exquisite idylls
are playing in musical comedy."

"Don't Barbe! Not when you're talking about her! I know she's an
ignorant little thing; but to me she's like a wild-flower----"

"Wild-flowers can be cultivated, Rash."

"Yes, but the wild-flower she's most like is the one you see in the
late summer all along the dusty highways----"

She put up both palms in a gesture of protestation. "Oh, Rash, please
don't be poetical. It gets on my nerves. I can't stand it. I like you
in every mood but your sentimental one." She came to a halt beside
the mantelpiece, on which she rested an elbow, turning to look at him.
"Now tell me, Rash! Suppose I wasn't in the world at all. Or suppose
you'd never heard of me. And su