"Yes. I think that. A man is always more or less of a baby. Years of discretion he seldom reaches. You are angry with your wife, and would be revenged upon her, and your way to revenge yourself is to make a second woman hate you."
"A second?"
"I should probably hate you in six months," says she, with a touch of passion. "I am not sure that I do not hate you now."
Her nerve is fast failing her. If she had a doubt about it before, the certainty now that Baltimore's feeling for her is merely friendship—the desire of a lonely man for some sympathetic companion—anything but love, has entered into her and crushed her. He would devote the rest of his life to her. She is sure of that—but always it would be a life filled with an unavailing regret. A horror of the whole situation has seized upon her. She will never be any more to him than a pleasant memory, while he to her must be an ever-growing pain. Oh! to be able to wrench herself free, to be able to forget him to blot him out of her mind forever.
"A second woman!" repeats he, as if struck by this thought to the exclusion of all others.
"Yes!"
"You think, then," gazing at her, "that she—hates me?"
Lady Swansdown breaks into a low but mirthless laugh. The most poignant anguish rings through it.
"She! she!" cries she, as if unable to control herself, and then stops suddenly placing her hand to her forehead. "Oh, no, she doesn't hate you," she says. "But how you betray yourself! Do you wonder I laugh? Did ever any man so give himself away? You have been declaring to me for months that she hates you, yet when I put it into words, or you think I do, it seems as though some fresh new evil had befallen you. Ah! give up this role of Don Juan, Baltimore. It doesn't suit you."
"I have had no desire to play the part," says he, with a frown.