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"What do you mean?"
"You can't have Captain Vauvenarde for your husband, Dale for your
_cavaliere servente_, and myself for your guide, philosopher and friend
all at the same time."
"Which would you advise me to give up?"
"That's obvious. Give up Dale."
She uttered a sound midway between a sob and a laugh, and said, as it
seemed, ironically:
"Would you take his place?"
Somewhat ironically, too, I replied, "A crock, my dear lady, with one
foot in the grave has no business to put the other into the _Pays du
Tendre_."
But all the same I had an absurd desire to take her at her word, not
for the sake of constituting myself her _amant en titre_, but so as
to dispossess the poor boy who was clamouring wildly for her among his
mother's snuffy colleagues in Berlin.
"That's another reason why I shrink from your going in search of my
husband," she said, dabbing her eyes. "Your ill-health."
"I shall have to go abroad out of this dreadful climate in any case.
Doctor's orders. And I might just as well travel about with an object in
view as idle in Monte Carlo or Egypt.


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