Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/126

124 lysing themselves. Many of them had reached the age when the second mode of pleasure outweighs the first. They experienced only in order to contemplate their experience and themselves. Teresa had a way of listening, and asking intelligent questions. None of her acquaintances needed much coaxing. Soon or late all blossomed into anecdote, narrative, and reflections on their lives. Some were clever men. But Teresa, when she repeated what they said to Basil, often made them appear irresistibly comic; and Basil, between roars of laughter, would add details discreetly omitted by the autobiographer. Teresa, listening to these foot-notes with drooping eyelids and contemptuous lips, said sometimes:

"I could never fall in love with a man that you knew well!"

"I don't do it on purpose!" he had replied with a joyous shout. "Only I like to tell you things!"

It was Basil who had told Teresa about the ballet-dancer. Gerald never talked about himself or his affairs to her. He appeared as much bored by all that related to himself as he was interested in all that concerned her. On the occasions when he buried himself in obscurity, she missed him, and thought much about him.

The morning after Alice's dinner, word came