Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 5.pdf/475

Rh ville from under the brim of the boldly trimmed bonnet.

"You understand clearly she is a properly constituted mermaid with a real physical tail?"

"Well?" said Lady Poynting Mallow.

"Apart from any question of Miss Glendower"

"That's understood."

"I think that such a marriage would be impossible."

"Why?"

My cousin played round the question. "She's an immortal, for example, with a past."

"Simply makes her more interesting."

Melville tried to enter into her point of view. "You think," he said, "she would go to London for him, and marry at St. George's, Hanover Square, and pay for a mansion in Park Lane and visit just anywhere he liked?"

"That's precisely what she would do. Just now, with a Court that is waking up"

"It's precisely what she won't do," said Melville.

"But any woman would do it who had the chance."

"She's a mermaid."

"She's a fool," said Lady Poynting Mallow.

"She doesn't even mean to marry him; it doesn't enter into her code."

"The hussy! What does she mean?"

My cousin made a gesture seaward. "That!" he said. "She's a mermaid."

"What?"

"Out there."