‘Sent him away sad and doubtful—very doubtful if the happiness he believed in was the real article after all, and disposed to ask himself how it was that his heart was beating in a new fashion, and that some new sense had been added to his nature, of which he had no inkling before. Sent him away with the notes of a melody floating through his brain, so that the merry laugh of his children will be a discord, and such a memory of a soft glance, that his wife’s bright look will be meaningless.’
‘And I have done all this? Poor me!’
‘Yes, and done it so often, that it leaves no remorse behind it.’
‘And the same, I suppose, with the others?’
‘With Mr. Walpole, and Dick, and Mr. O’Shea, and Mr. Atlee too, when he was here, in their several ways.’
‘Oh, in theirs, not in mine, then?’
‘I am but a bungler in my explanation. I wished to say that you adapted your fascinations to the tastes of each.’
‘What a siren!’
‘Well, yes—what a siren; for they’re all in love in some fashion or other; but I could have forgiven you these, had you spared the married man.’
‘So you actually envy that poor prisoner the gleam of light and the breath of cold air that comes between his prison bars—that one moment of ecstasy that reminds him how he once was free and at large, and no manacles to weigh him down? You will not let him even touch bliss in imagination? Are you not more cruel than me?’