WORLD'S END

Tears were making their way onto Beauty's tender cheeks. She didn't answer, and Lanny wondered if it was because she had no answer. He was afraid of hurting his mother; but also he was afraid of seeing her hurt Marcel. He had watched them both on the yacht, and impressions of their love had been indelibly graven upon his mind. Marcel adored her; and what would he do without her?

"Tell me this, Beauty, have you told Harry you will marry him?"

"No, I haven't exactly said that; but he wants me so much - "

"Well, I don't think you ought to make up your mind to such a step in a hurry. If it's debts, you ought to talk to Robbie about them."

"Oh, no, Lanny! I promised him I wouldn't have any debts."

"Well, don't you think you ought to wait and talk to Marcel at least?" Lanny was growing up rapidly in the face of this crisis.

"Oh, I couldn't do that!"

"But what do you expect to do? Just walk off and leave him? Would that be fair, Beauty? It seems to me it would be dreadfully unkind!"

His mother was staring at him, greatly disconcerted. "Lanny, you oughtn't to talk to me like that. I'm your mother!"

"You're the best mother in the world," declared the boy, with ardor. "But I don't want to see you do something that'll make us all unhappy. Please, Beauty, don't promise Harry till we've had time to think about it. Some day you may see me making some mistake, and then you'll be begging me to wait."

Beauty began sobbing. "Oh, Lanny, I'm in such an awful mess! Harry will be so upset - I've kept him waiting too long!"

"Let him wait, all the same," he insisted. He found himself suddenly taking the position of head of the family. "We just can't decide such a thing all at once." Then, after a pause: "Tell me - does Harry know about Marcel?" "Yes, he knows, of course." "But does he know how - how serious it is?" "He doesn't care, Lanny! He's in love with me." "Well, he oughtn't to be - at least, I mean, he oughtn't try to take you away from us!"

VI

Lanny Budd, in the middle of his fifteenth year, had to sit down and figure out this complicated man and woman business. He had been collecting data from various persons, over a large section of Europe. They hadn't left him to find out about it in his own way, they had forced it upon him: Baron Livens-Mazursky, Dr. Bauer-Siemans, the Social-Democratic editor, Beauty, Marcel and Harry, Edna and Ezra Hackabury, Miss Noggyns and Rosemary, Sophie and her lover - Lanny had seen them embracing one evening on the deck of the Bluebird - Mrs. Emily, who had a leading French art critic as her ami, old M. France and his Madame de Caillavet and his Argentine actress - to say nothing of his jokes about the leading ladies and gentlemen of history, rather horrid persons, some of them. King Louis XV had said to one of his courtiers that one woman was the same as another, only first she must be bathed and then have her teeth attended to.

In this world into which Lanny Budd had been born, love was a game which people played for their amusement; a pastime on about the same level as bridge or baccarat, horse racing or polo. It was, incidentally, a duel between men and women, in which each tried to achieve prestige in the eyes of the other; that was what the salons were for, the dinner parties, the fashionable clothes, the fine houses, the works of art. Lanny couldn't have formulated that, but he observed the facts, and in a time of stress understanding came to him.

Concealment was an important aspect of nearly all love, as Lanny had observed it; and this seemed to indicate that many people disapproved of the practice - the church people, for example. He had never been to church, except for a fashionable wedding, or to look at stained-glass windows and architecture. But he knew that many society people professed to be religious, and now and then they repented of their love affairs and became actively pious. This was one of the most familiar aspects of life in France, and in French fiction. Sophie's mother-in-law, an elderly lady of the old nobility with a worthless and dissipated son, lived alone, wore black, kept herself surrounded by priests and nuns, and prayed day and night for the soul of the prodigal.

Of course, there were married persons who managed to stay together and raise families. Robbie was apparently that sort; he never went after women, so far as Lanny had heard; but he seldom referred to his family in Connecticut, so it hardly existed for the boy. Apparently the Pomeroy-Nielsons also got along with each other; but Lanny had heard so much of extramarital adventures, he somehow took it for granted that if you came to know a person well enough, you'd find some hidden affaire.