“Then you don’t deny it?”
“Deny it?” he repeated, with scorn in his voice. “Why on earth should I deny it?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “A man generally denies that sort of thing to the girl he wants to marry,” she said.
“That only shows how little you understand me,” he replied, and there was despair in his words.
“O, I understand you well enough,” she answered, bitterly. “You are just like all men. But what I can’t understand is how you could be going about with that woman at the same time that you were making love to me.”
Again he was silent. It seemed that he had to turn her words over in his mind before their significance was clear.
“You mean,” he said at length, “that if I had told you Lizette was an old flame of mine now set aside, you would have condoned it?”
“Women have to forgive a great deal in the men they love,” she answered.
“You mean,” he went on, ruthlessly, “that you think me capable of coming to you with that woman’s kisses on my lips?”
It was she, now, who was silent for a while. “I’ve got to think you capable of it,” she said at last. “You were with her only a few days ago.”