Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/347

 be disagreeable and tacitly impertinent to others.

There is a certain latitude, which taken, makes you look much more amiable. Madame Mila was kissed on both cheeks really with sincerity by many ladies in many cities, merely because her nice management of her Maurice made their Maurices easier for them, and their pleasant consciousness of her frailty was the one touch which made them all akin. Polyandry made easy is a great charm in Society—there is no horrid scandal for any one, and no fuss at all: Monsieur is content and Madame enjoys herself, everybody goes everywhere, and everything is as it should be.

"If that old man had lived, Hilda would have been glad to be like everyone else," Madame Mila thought, with much impatience. "Of course, because she is quite free, she don't care a bit to use her freedom."

Madame Mila herself felt that although her passion for Maurice was the fifty-sixth passion of her soul, and the most ardent of all her existence, that even Maurice himself would have lost some