Dead silence followed this question. After some seconds the woman's voice resumed—
"Ah! all men are cowards. Well, I will tell you. Your question implied yet another, and it was, Do I, hating my husband, love you?"
"Geraldine!"
"Do you still wish that question answered? I will do you that favour also: Listen: for the life of me—I don't know."
And the speaker laughed—a laugh full of amused tolerance, as though her confession had left her a careless spectator of its results. Mr. Fogo shuddered.
"In heaven's name, Geraldine, don't mock me!"
"But it is true. How should I know? You have talked to me, read me your verses—and, indeed, I think them very beautiful. You have with comparative propriety, because in verse, invited me to fly with thee to a desolate isle in the Southern Sea—wherever that is—and forgetting my shame and likewise blame, while you do the same with name and fame and its laurel-leaf, go to moral grief on a coral reef—"
"Geraldine, you are torturing me."
"Do I not quote correctly? My point is this:—A woman will listen to talk, but she admires action. Prove that you are ready, not to fly to a coral reef, but to do me one small service, and you may have another answer."
"Name it."