“And how does this affect me?” Elizabeth asked, coldly.
“Only in this way,” Tavernake answered. “You asked me how it was that I could find you as beautiful as ever and adore you no longer. The reason is because I know you to be wretchedly selfish. I believed in you before. Everything that you did seemed right. That was because I was a fool, because you had filled my brain with impossible fancies, because I saw you and everything that you did through a distorted mirror.”
“Have you come here to be rude?” she asked him.
“Not in the least,” he replied. “I came here to see whether I was cured.”
She began to laugh, very softly at first, but soon she threw herself back among the cushions and laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder.
“Oh, you are just the same!” she cried. “Just the same dear, truthful bundle of honesty and awkwardness and ignorance. So you are going to be victim of Beatrice's bow and spear, after all.”
“I have asked your sister to marry me,” Tavernake admitted. “She will not.”
“She was very wise,” Elizabeth declared, wiping the tears from her eyes. “As an experience you are delightful. As a husband you would be terribly impossible. Are you going to stay and take me out to dinner this evening? I'm sure you have a dress suit now.”
Tavernake shook his head.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I have already an engagement.”