“Then if he does understand—and still comes to Venice——?” She looked at me with her brows raised and a smile on her lips. “Looks serious, doesn’t it?” she ended. She broke into low laughter. “It would be such glorious fun to become Mrs. Godfrey Frost!”
“You’ve got a husband still, remember!”
“That’s nothing—now. Or do you set up Arsenio as morality?”
“Oh, no! If Arsenio’s morality, why, damn morality!” I said.
“And there’s just the piquant touch of uncertainty as to whether I could do it—whether I could become even so much as an unofficial Mrs. Godfrey—whom Nina didn’t know, but whom she’d think about! Still—he is coming to Venice. It’s rather tempting, isn’t it, Julius?”
“Does a revenge on Arsenio come into it at all?”
Her smile disappeared, her face suddenly grew sad. “Oh, no, I’m having that already. I don’t want to have—not as revenge—but I can’t help it. It is so with me—no credit to me, either.”
“All the same, Arsenio isn’t pleased at our friend coming to Venice. He was very glad when I took this apartment—mainly because then Godfrey couldn’t.”
“If you hadn’t come, and he had—I wonder!”
“Do you care for him in the very least?” I asked, perhaps rather hotly.