Page:Under the Deodars - Kipling (1890).djvu/71

 "That is a vice peculiar to men. I dislike him because he is generally in the wake of some girl, to the disgust of the eligibles. He will persecute May Holt no more, unless I am much mistaken."

"No. I think Mrs. Delville may occupy his attention for a while."

"Do you suppose she knows that he is the head of a family?"

"Not from his lips. He swore me to eternal secrecy. Wherefore I tell you. Don't you know that type of man?"

"Not intimately, thank goodness! As a general rule when a man begins to abuse his wife to me, I find that the Lord gives me wherewith to answer him according to his folly; and we part with a coolness between us. I laugh."

"I'm different. I've no sense of humour."

"Cultivate it, then. It has been my mainstay for more years than I care to think about. A well-educated sense of humour will save a woman when religion, training and home influences fail. And we may all need salvation sometimes."

"Do you suppose that the Delville woman has humour?"

"Her dress bewrays her. How can a thing who wears her supplément under her left arm have any notion of the fitness of things—much less their folly. If she discards The Dancing Master after having once seen him dance, I may respect her. Otherwise"

"But are we not both assuming a great deal too much, dear? You saw the woman at Peliti's—half an hour later you saw her walking with The Dancing Master—an hour later you meet her here at the Library."

"Still with The Dancing Master, remember."

"Still with The Dancing Master, I admit, but why on the strength of that should you imagine"

"I imagine nothing. I have no imagination. I am only convinced that The Dancing Master is attracted to The Dowd because he is objectionable in almost every way and she in every other. If I know the man as you have described him, he holds his wife in deadly subjection at present."