Page:Tales of John Oliver Hobbes.djvu/111

Rh "Oh, Cynthia, you are just the same."

"You can't see very much through this thick veil."

"I was not thinking of your face."

"Oh!... Have I grown dreadfully plain?" She seized this opportunity to lift her veil up.

"No, you haven't," he said.

"I wish I were different," she sighed. " I should probably be better looking if my mind were nicer. I really do want to be more useful—I have got money now. Don't you think I might take an interest in hospitals and things?" "By all means. I should send one of them a big cheque or found a Cargill Ward. The Cargill Ward, I think, might sound better, and really would not be any more trouble. I don't know, however, whether it would alter the shape of your nose or change the colour of your hair."

"You needn't be so brutal. You always make the worst of me."

"I wish I could think that I did. It is so disheartening to see a woman with any amount of honesty about her wilfully and deliberately contorting it all into something very different."

"Love me for my faults and not my virtues, dearest, and then I shall never disappoint you. I can always live up to them. Again that tantalizing glimpse of the real Cynthia. Not to defy the codes of polite society, not to kiss her at once, not to forget mummies and Grace—for at least one moment—required some self-restraint. Let any man imagine himself similarly situated. Godfrey dared not trust his tongue. So he said nothing.