With a laugh he slipped the elastic over his cap.  “What a bore it must be always to keep beautiful,” he remarked.  “You can’t imagine the positive delight there is in the freedom of ugliness.”

“I dare say.”  She had turned her head to look at a passing carriage, and he saw the lovely delicacy of her profile through the blown transparent folds of her veil.  “I shall know it some day,” she added presently, “for after I’ve safely passed my fiftieth birthday, I mean never to look into a glass again.  Then I’ll break my mirrors and be really happy.”

“No, you won’t, my dear cousin,” he rejoined, “for you’ll continue to see yourself in Perry’s eyes.”

He watched with a sensation of pleasure the graceful shrug of her shoulders under her shapeless coat.

“Oh, there’s no chance of that,” she assured him; “he is always in them himself?”

The vague curiosity in his thoughts took form suddenly in words.  “Where’s he now, by the way, do you know?”

Her musical, empty laugh was as perfect as the indifferent glance she gave him.  “Enjoying himself, I hope,” she answered.  “He hung around me until I sent him out in the sheer desperation of weariness.”

Though her lashes did not quiver, he knew not only that she lied, but that she was perfectly aware of the assurance and extent of his knowledge.  The hopeless gallantry of her deception appealed to the fighting spirit in his blood, and he found himself wondering foolishly if Laura could have played with so high an air the part of a neglected wife.  To a man of his peculiarly eager temperament there existed a curious fascination in the idea of pushing to its limit of endurance an unalterable constancy.  Would Laura have uttered her futile lies with so exquisite an insolence? or would she have acted in tears the patient Griselda in her closet?  The virtue of truthfulness was the one he had most nearly associated with her, and it seemed to him impossible that she should stoop to shield herself behind a falsehood.  Yet he could not dispel his curiosity as to how she would act in circumstances which he felt to be impossible and purely imaginary.

He wanted to speak of her to Gerty, but a restraint that was almost embarrassment kept him silent, and Gerty herself could not be induced to abandon her flippant satirical tone.  So Laura was not mentioned between them; and he felt when at last he brought Gerty to her door again that, on the whole, the drive had been a disappointment.  He had meant to seek her sympathy with his love for her friend, and instead he had been met by a fine, exquisite edge of cutting humour.  For once he had felt the need to be wholly in earnest, and Gerty had taken nothing seriously, least of all the hint which he had dropped concerning the ultimate stability of his emotion.  If she had got her heartache from his sex, he saw clearly that she meant to have her laugh on it as well; and the only remark from which she had let fall even momentarily her gay derision was in answer to some phrase of his in which had occurred the name of Roger Adams.