Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ Andrew stirred uneasily.
“M’amie,” he said, “we’ve been much in each other’s company of late — more, perhaps, than is best for either of us.”
“How can that be?” asked Mirabelle, with a little laugh. “We love each other — ça suffit. It’s impossible to be too much together.” ”

“ But that was only for one night — for just that one night! With the next day, with all the sights and sounds to which I am accustomed — the Allée at noon, Armenonville at tea-time, Paillard’s at midnight — I saw what the end must be; and, since then, I’ve watched, as only a woman watches, for that first little hint of its coming which only a woman sees! Ah, mon cheri, it has come, it has come indeed! ”

“ In a woman, the manner of a kiss performs the midwife’s office to the beginnings of clairvoyance.
“I wonder,” said Andrew presently, “if you know that people are talking about us, ma chère?”
Mirabelle commented upon this intelligence with a tilt of her eyebrows.
“Yes,” continued Andrew, “it seems that our doings are become public property, and our reputations are in jeopardy.” ”

“ With all her beauty, all her perfect mimicry of breeding, all the little significant hints of colour and perfume with which she so skilfully clothed with charm whatever pertained to her, she had never struck below his ready appreciation of whatever was suggestive of refinement and eloquent of femininity. It was her novelty which had principally charmed him, but novelty is the butterfly of the sensations — the most brilliant, the shortest-lived of these emotional ephemera. Mrs. Carnby had struck the key-note in her cool analysis of the demi-monde: “These women don’t wear. ”

“ A little laughter, a kiss or two, and the rest, a ‘je t’aime’ which means something less than nothing, and then — They speak of the women whom men abuse! What is that to being used — and flung aside?”
“Mirabelle!”
“Ah, don’t speak to me! I know all that you’re going to say — I’ve heard it all before! I knew it, back there a minute, when you kissed me, thinking of another woman! It’s the old story — a little harder to bear this time, perhaps, because I’ve cared very much for you. Somehow, you seemed different from other men. You were young, you were gentle, you were respectful, mon Dieu! ”

“ Never will you be able to comprehend what you thus came to mean to me. I have always been vain, lazy, passionately desirous of all that is softest, sweetest, most palatable in life; and these things I have had — but at what a price! ”

“ In youth, reaction carries with a merciless arraignment of all which has made possible disloyalty to standard; with age, men learn to blame themselves, their own folly and frailty. In his heart of hearts, Andrew impugned the girl ”