“I don’t call that love. I call it jealousy.”
At this Christine laughed outright. “And what emotion, may I ask, has just brought you here in such haste?”
The thrust went home. Riatt changed countenance.
“But I,” he said, “never pretended to love you.”
“Why then are you marrying me?”
“Heaven knows.”
“I know, too,” she answered, unperturbed by his rudeness, “and some day if you’re good I’ll tell you.”
Her calm assumption that everything was well seemed to him unbearable. “I don’t know that I feel very much inclined to chat,” he said, turning toward the door. “I’ll see you sometime to-morrow.”
She said nothing to oppose him, and he left the room. Downstairs the same footman was waiting to let him out. To him, at least, Riatt seemed a triumphant lover, only as Linburne had long since heavily subsidized him, even his admiration was tinctured with regret.
As for Max, himself, he left the house even more restless and dissatisfied than he had entered it.