[Remorsefully.] My dear!
Ottoline.
[Raising her head.] That scene between us in the Rue Soufflot set my blood on fire. To have a request refused me was sufficiently mortifying; but to be whipped, scourged, scarified, into the bargain—! I flew down your stairs after I left you, and drove home, scorching with indignation; and next morning I sent for Lucien—a blind adorer!—and promised to be his wife. [Leaning back.] Comprenez-vous, maintenant? Solely to hurt you; to hurt you, the one man among my acquaintances whom I—admired!
[She searches for her handkerchief. He rises and goes to the mantelpiece and stares at the flowers in the grate.
Philip.
[Almost inaudibly.] Oh, Otto!
Ottoline.
[Wiping a tear from her cheek.] Heigh, dear me! Whenever I go over the past, and that's not seldom, I can't help thinking you might have been a little gentler with me—a girl of three-and-twenty—and have made allowances. [Blowing her nose.] What was Dad before he went out to Buenos Aires with his wife and children; only a junior partner in a small concern in the City! Wasn't it natural that, when he came back to Europe, prosperous but a nobody, he should be eager to elbow himself into a respectable social position, and that his belongings should have caught the fever?
Philip.
[Wretchedly.] Yes—yes——