“I did not ask that—at first,” he answered. “It is a good deal, I know.”
“Then do you want to come and kiss me every day?” she asked, “because I don’t think that that would suit me either.”
“I can believe it,” he said.
“I am inclined to think,” she said, “that you are a very grasping and unreasonable person. I have permitted you privileges which more men than my modesty permits me to tell you of have begged for in vain. You have accepted them—I promised nothing beyond, nor have you asked for it. Yet because I was obliged to talk reasonably to you, you flung yourself out of my house, and I am left to rescue you at the expense of my pride, perhaps also of my reputation, from associations which you ought to be ashamed of.”
“To talk reasonably to me,” he repeated slowly. “Do you remember what you said?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Naturally! And what I said was true enough.”
“I was to be content with scraps. To go away and forget you, until chance or a whim of yours should bring us together again.”
“Did you want so much more?” she asked, with a swift maddening glance at him.
He fell on his knees before her couch.