"I love to talk nonsense. It annoys you, and I want to see your eyes flash. I have seen them laughing—and full of pain—and snakily cold. Now I want them to flash—and then I would like them to grow tender.—They would be divine like that."
Katherine sat down and took up a pen, with a glance of withering indifference; then she began to address the labels of the packets from a list.
He came quite close to her; he was feeling a number of things.
"What a temptress you are—aren't you?—teasing me like this!"
Katherine now opened her eyes wide and stared at him, but she did not move away an inch.
"The whole thing is only in your imagination," she said, calmly. "You are a proof of my theory that personal emotion creates appearance, and hides reality."
"You understand then that I do feel emotion?"
"Why, of course. A man of your brains and cultivation could not behave in so foolish a way otherwise."
He drew back and leaned against the mantelpiece while he laughed shortly.