“No,” said he vehemently, growing hot at the suggestion. “Gentlemen don’t listen at doors.”
“Don’t they?” said she incredulously. “Why not?”
“It is mean, sneaking, bad form altogether.”
“Is it? Then how do you find out things? Ah, you would pay a servant, perhaps, to do all that for you?”
George grew scarlet and drew his hands away from her, half in indignation, half in horror.
“Nouna!” he exclaimed, “where on earth did you pick up these awful ideas? To pay a servant to play the spy is the most rascally thing a man could do! A man who did it would deserve to be kicked.”
“Would he? Then what would he do if he thought his wife deceived him? Wouldn’t he mind?”
George sprang up to his feet, and took a few turns about the room. He was appalled by this fearful perversion of mind, by this terrible candour, and he thought with a shudder of Rahas’ statement that the women of the East have no souls. How should he set to work to make her see things with his eyes? He glanced at her, and saw that she had changed her attitude; curling her feet up under her, and leaning her head on her hand, she sat quite still, nothing moving but her eyes, watching him. He came back, knelt before her, and looked into her face.
“In England, Nouna,” he said very gently, “when a man wants a wife, he chooses a girl whom he believes to be so good, so true, so noble that he couldn’t possibly think she would do anything that wasn’t right. And he loves her with all his heart, and never thinks of anybody but her, and spends all his time trying to make her happy. So he never thinks about such a dreadful thing as her deceiving him, because, you see, she couldn’t, unless she was very wicked, treat a man badly when he was so good to her.”
“Then what Sundran says is all wrong.”