"
"No, I certainly don't love him," said Margaret.
"Because you don't even like him."
"What a strange way of advocating your friend you have."
Arkwright flushed scarlet. "I thought you'd quite dismissed him as
a possibility," he stammered.
"With a woman every man's a possibility so long as no man's a
certainty."
"Margaret, you couldn't marry a man you didn't like?"
She seemed to reflect. "Not if I were in love with another at the
time," she said finally. "That's as far as my womanly delicacy--
what's left of it after my years in society--can influence me. And
it's stronger, I believe, than the delicacy of most women of our
sort."
They were sitting now on the bench round the circle where the
fountain was tossing high its jets in play with the sunshine. She
was looking very much the woman of the fashionable world, and the
soft grays, shading into blues, that dominated her costume gave
her an exceeding and entrancing seeming of fragility. Arkwright
thought her eyes wonderful; the sweet, powerful yet delicate odor
of the lilac sachet powder with which her every garment was
saturated set upon his senses like a love-philter.
"Yes, you are finer and nobler than most women," he said giddily.
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