"So in the end it will be like—all the others?"
Because the question annoyed him he responded to it with a frankness that was almost brutal. "Everything is like everything else," he returned, "there's nothing new, least of all in the emotions."
For a minute she looked at him in silence while the steady green flame appeared to him to grow brighter in her eyes. Was it contempt or curiosity that he saw in her face?
"Poor Laura!" she said at last very softly. "Poor happy Laura!"
At her words his dissenting laugh broke out, but he showed by his animated glance a moment later that it was of herself rather than of Laura that he was thinking.
"Is it such a terrible fate, after all, to become my wife?" he enquired.
His look challenged hers, and lifting her insolent bright eyes, she returned steadily the smiling gaze he bent upon her.
"Oh, dear me, yes," she answered merrily, "it is almost if not quite as bad as being Perry's." The carriage had stopped at the door of his club, and his mind was already at work over the approaching interview.
"Well, you escaped the lesser for the greater ill," he responded pleasantly, as he gave her hand a careless parting pressure.