"Do you," said Adela, sinking far into the recesses of the arm-chair, and holding up the screen again, "like being there better than anywhere else? I suppose Maggie is very charming?"
"You know just what she is."
"I'm sure I don't. I'm a woman."
There was a long pause. Tom felt absurd, standing there in the middle of the room. Suddenly Adela leapt to her feet.
"Oh, go away! Yes, you're right to go back. Oh, yes, you're quite right. Good-bye, Mr. Loring."
For a moment longer Tom stood still; then he moved, not towards the door, but towards Adela. When he spoke to her it was in a husky voice. There were no sweet seducing tones in his voice.
"There's only one place in the world I really care to be," he said.
She did not speak.
"Harry and Mrs. Dennison are my friends," he said, "and as long as my time's my own, I'll give it to them. But you don't suppose I go there for happiness?"
"I don't suppose you ever did anything for happiness," said Adela, as though she were advancing a heinous charge. "Really, nothing makes me so impatient as an unselfish man."