“I was thinking about that poem Jenny to-day. It’s funny you should mention Rossetti.”
“Impervious youth!” she exclaimed.
“It’s hopeless for you to try to wound me with words,” Michael assured her, with grave earnestness. “I was wounded the day before yesterday into complete immunity from small pains.”
“I suppose you found her ...”
Michael flushed and gripped her by the wrist.
“No, no, don’t say something brutal and beastly!” he stammered. “You know what happened. You prophesied it. Well, I thought you were wrong, and you were right. That’s a victory for you. You couldn’t wish for me to be more humbled than I am by having to admit that I wasn’t strong enough to keep her faithful for six weeks. But we did agree, I think, about one thing.” He smiled sadly. “We did agree that she was beautiful. You were as proud of that as I was, and of course you had a great deal more reason to be proud. You did own her. I never owned her, and isn’t that your great objection to the relation between man and woman?”
“What are you trying to make me do?” Sylvia asked.
“I want you to have Lily to live with you again.”
“To relieve yourself of all responsibility, I suppose,” she said bitterly.
“No, no; why will you persist in ascribing the worst motive to everything I say? Isn’t your jealousy fed full enough even yet?”