Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/385

 ludicrous condition! Yet again it was a pleasant paradox of Nature's to dower this carcass with the sensibility which might have given a crowning charm to the beauty of Coralie. In him it could attract no love, to him it could bring no happiness. Probably it caused him to play the piano better; if this justifies Nature, she is welcome to the plea. For my part, I felt that it was monstrously bad taste in him to come and be miserable here and now in Forstadt. But he overshot his mark.

"Good God, my dear Struboff!" I cried in extreme annoyance, "think how little it matters, how little any of us care, even, if you like, how little you ought to care yourself! You've tumbled down on the gravel; very well! Stop crying, and don't, for Heaven's sake, keep showing me the graze on your knee. We all, I suppose, have grazes on our knees. Get your mother to put you into stockings, and nobody will see it. I've been in stockings for years." I burst into a laugh.

He did not understand what I would be at; that, perhaps, was hardly wonderful.

"The music has affected me," he mumbled.

"Then come and let some champagne affect you," I advised him irritably. "What, are you to spoil a pleasant evening?"

He looked at me with ponderous sorrowful reproach.

"A pleasant evening!" he groaned, as he blew his nose.

"Yes," I cried loudly. "A damnably pleasant evening, M. Struboff," and I caught him by the arm, dragged him from his stool, and carried him off to the table with me. Here I set him down between Varvilliers and myself; Wetter and Coralie,