Belinda waited, with her little secret smile. She loved the aching of her arms where his fierce grip had bruised her. She was very sure of him. She waited for him to come back as patiently as a fisherman waits for the up-rush of a pike that is sulking under the boat. Belinda rocked gently in the boat of her own love, and waited with smiling patience for her sulky lover to rejoin her.
But when Loring did finally turn to her again, his mood was not at all the lover's. He spoke with hard, deliberate precision, biting off the words at her, as it were.
"If you expect me to insult a woman like Sophy and ruin her life to please you, you're rather thoroughly mistaken," he said.
Belinda eyed him curiously. Then she made a great mistake. Instinct had kept her from making it before. Now self-will smothered instinct. She was so bent on making Morris see this question as she saw it, and without further loss of time, that she had recourse to an heroic method.
"Are you really as blind as you seem to be, Morry?" she asked.
"'Blind'?" said Loring, rather taken aback.
"Exactly—stone blind."
He said with stiffness:
"I don't catch your meaning."
"Well ... do you really think that Sophy will mind divorcing?"