Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/32

20 In other respects, however, they were as unlike as unlike may be. Thirty was plump and rosy and full-blown, with a laughing good-humoured face, and merry big blue eyes; eight and twenty, thin, tall, and listless-looking, his face pale and aquiline, his eyes dark, morose. They had finished their coffee, and now the plump man was nibbling sweetmeats, which he selected with much careful discrimination from an assortment in a porcelain dish. The thin man was drinking something green, possibly chartreuse.

"Women are a pack of samenesses," he grumbled, "and love-affairs are damnable iterations."

"Oh," cried out his comrade, in a tone of plaintive protest, "I said red-haired. You can't pretend that red-haired women are the same."

"The same, with the addition of a little henna," the pale young man argued wearily.

"It may surprise you to learn that I was thinking of red-haired women who are born red-haired," his friend remarked, from an altitude.

"In that case," said he, "I admit there is a difference — they have white eyelashes." And he emptied his glass of green stuff. "Is all this àpropos of boots?" he questioned.

The other regarded him solemnly. "It's àpropos of your immortal soul," he answered, nodding his head. "It's medicine for a mind diseased. The only thing that will wake you up, and put a little life and human nature in you, is a love-affair with a red-haired woman. Red in the hair means fire in the heart. It means all sorts of things. If you really wish to please me, Uncle, you'll go and fall in love with a red-haired woman."

The younger man, whom the elder addressed as Uncle, shrugged his shoulders, and gave a little sniff. Then he lighted a cigarette.

The elder man left the table, and went to the open window. Rh