"Very well."
"I don't want you to feel that you have ever to stay in or do any work you don't feel inclined for. We shall have lots of time, for the rest of our lives. No doubt to-morrow you would wish to spend with your mother, if she is going away."
"I said good-bye to her this morning. There is no need for me to go back. I came prepared to stay. Unless of course you would rather be alone, then I can go out for a walk." This last with a peculiar tone in the words.
"Naturally you will want to go for walks, and drives, and shopping. You don't imagine that I shall expect you to be a prisoner, just waiting on my beck and call!"
"Yes, that is how I took the bargain. It is quite unfair otherwise. I am here as a paid dependant and receiving really too high wages for any possible work I can give in return. I would not have entered into it otherwise or on any other terms. I loathe to receive favors."
"Madame Lucifer!"
She flashed blue sparks at me!
"I am not forced to command you to work you know," I went on "that is not part of the bargain, the bargain is entirely concerned with my not asking you to give me any favors, personal favors, like affection, or caresses, etcetera, or that I shall ever expect you to be really my wife."
She frowned.
"Well, you may put your mind entirely at rest, you have been so awfully disagreeable to me for so long, ever since we were at Versailles in the summer, that you don't attract me at all now, except your intellect and your playing. So if you will talk sometimes and play sometimes, that will be all right. I don't desire anything else. Now, assured about this, can't you be at ease and restful again?"