Maybe she was just missing you. You were like one of the family, don't you know. And, well, you are a good-looking fellow, Levinsky, and she is only a woman."
"Nonsense!" I returned, the hot color mounting to my cheeks. "I am sure Dora had not a bad thought in her mind—"
"But she confessed," he interrupted me. "She said she was crazy for you and I could do as I pleased."
"But you know she did not mean it. She said it just for spite, just to make you feel bad, because you were quarreling with her."
He quoted a brutal question which he had once put to her concerning her relations with me, and then he quoted Dora as answering: "Yes, yes, yes! And if you don't like it you can sue me for divorce."
I laughed, making my merriment as realistic as I could. "It's all ridiculous nonsense, Max," I said. "You made life miserable to her and she was ready to say anything. She may have been worried over something, and you imagined all sorts of things. Maybe it was something about her education that worried her. You know how ambitious she is to be educated, and how hard she takes these things."
Max shook his head pensively
"I am sure it is as I say," I continued. "Dora is a peculiar woman. The trouble is, you judge her as if she were like the other women you meet. Hers is a different character."
This point apparently interested him
"She is always taken up with her thoughts," I pursued. "She is not so easy to understand, anyway. I lived over a year in your house, and yet I'll be hanged if I know what kind of woman she is. Of course you're her husband, but still—can you say you know what she is thinking of most of the time?"