Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/138

 the Morgans to a restless walk and told her about the Arab horse, how it has one less vertebra than the European, and therefore an extraordinarily short back and high tail. He told her that its muzzle is so delicate it can drink out of a china teacup, and then laughed and said he had never seen one do so. He told her that the cruel Arab bit can break a horse's jaw and how the animals live in terror of it. This gives them a characteristic mincing walk, pointing their noses, rearing and arching back their necks in constant fear of its punishment, and he described the beautiful 'listening' horses and a lovely war-mare who had died under him in battle and whose death he had cruelly avenged. Recalling Professor Ripley's lecture on moral codes throughout the world, she tentatively drew the conversation from horses to manners. And from manners Mr. Jones himself led to morals. It took him less than half an hour to show the girl that morals, as she understood the word, he had none.

Was the man she was pledged to marry...if she were so pledged...?

But why did he only tell her that he loved and wanted her? Why did he not ask her to marry him? Mr. Fox, even Professor Ripley, could have told her why.

Surely no man could be so sinful as to declare himself to a woman and then go off...forget...

Yet what else was he trying to tell her but that love came and went and came again and went again. That love, as she cherished the word in her maidenly heart, did not exist. There was only, so said Mr.