Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/56

 boasting and flattery; something endearing. The way she smiled at Coco and looked at the hare.'

'I don't dislike her. I feel as if I understood her; better than you could ever do, Jill—for I am somewhat devilish too, while you belong to the angelic category—better than she does herself. If she were twenty I'd probably fall in love with her. She's that kind of woman. She's never existed apart from her sex.'

'Do any of us?' Jill mused, ruefully. 'Perhaps you wouldn't care about me if I were eighty.'

'Yes, I should, Jill. Yes, I should,' Graham bent his dark head to smile into her eyes. 'That you're a woman lends you charm; but it's incidental. If you were a man you would be my greatest friend. That's the test.'

'Your greatest friend? When I don't understand the things you live for?—when there's only one side of your life that I touch at all?'

'It's the only side where I need to touch humanity. All I need is someone to rest with and play with and be myself with. You're the perfect comrade; as well as the perfect wife, Jill.'

It was sweet to Jill to hear this, and to know how true it was. She had reflected more than once of late that, if happy married life consisted in each one going his own way, the trouble with her and Dick was that, while he had so very much of a way, she herself had, nowadays, none at all. Her only way was the English country way that Dick, as he had truly said, had taken