“My good man,” she said, “whatever you do don’t try and be sentimental. You know quite well that I have never in my life pretended to care a rap about you—except to pass the time. You are altogether too obvious. Very young girls and very old women would rave about you. You simply don’t appeal to me. Perhaps I know you too well. What does it matter!”
He sighed and examined a sauce critically. They were lunching at Prince’s alone, at a small table near the wall.
“Your taste,” he remarked a little spitefully, “would be considered a trifle strange. Souspennier carries his years well, but he must be an old man.”
She sipped her wine thoughtfully.
“Old or young,” she said, “he is a man, and all my life I have loved men,—strong men. To have him here opposite to me at this moment, mine, belonging to me, the slave of my will, I would give—well, I would give—a year of my life—my new tiara—anything!”
“What a pity,” he murmured, “that we cannot make an exchange, you and I, Lucille and he!”
“Ah, Lucille!” she murmured. “Well, she is beautiful. That goes for much. And she has the grand air. But, heavens, how stupid!”
“Stupid!” he repeated doubtfully.
She drummed nervously upon the tablecloth with her fingers.
“Oh, not stupid in the ordinary way, of course, but yet a fool. I should like to see man or devil try and separate us if I belonged to him—until I was tired of him. That would come, of course. It comes always. It is the hideous part of life.”