When I came to that conclusion I became glad that I was
angry or else I would have laughed right out before him."
"I have heard a woman say once, a woman of the people--do you hear
me, Dona Rita?--therefore deserving your attention, that one should
never laugh at love."
"My dear," she said gently, "I have been taught to laugh at most
things by a man who never laughed himself; but it's true that he
never spoke of love to me, love as a subject that is. So perhaps .
. . But why?"
"Because (but maybe that old woman was crazy), because, she said,
there was death in the mockery of love."
Dona Rita moved slightly her beautiful shoulders and went on:
"I am glad, then, I didn't laugh. And I am also glad I said
nothing more. I was feeling so little generous that if I had known
something then of his mother's allusion to 'white geese' I would
have advised him to get one of them and lead it away on a beautiful
blue ribbon. Mrs. Blunt was wrong, you know, to be so scornful. A
white goose is exactly what her son wants. But look how badly the
world is arranged. Such white birds cannot be got for nothing and
he has not enough money even to buy a ribbon. Who knows! Maybe it
was this which gave that tragic quality to his pose by the
mantelpiece over there.
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